Phonology

Sound inventory and phonological rules

13 consonants
4 vowels

Consonant Inventory

MannerBilabialAlveolarPostalveolarVelarUvularGlottal
Plosive
b
td
·
k
q
·
Nasal
m
n
·
·
·
·
Fricative
·
s
·
·
·
h
Affricate
·
·
dʒ
·
·
·
Approximant
·
ɹ
·
w
·
·
Lateral approximant
·
l
·
·
·
·

Vowel Inventory

HeightFrontCentralBack
Close··
u
Open-mid
ɛ
·
ɔ
Open·
ä
·

Syllable Structure

(C)V(V)(C)

Phonological Rules

q → q / _
r → ɹ / _
j → dʒ / _
w → w / _
s → s / _
ǀ → ǀ / _
ǃ → ǃ / _
ǁ → ǁ / _
ǂ → ǂ / _
ʘ → ʘ / _
a → ä / _
ā → äː / _
e → ɛ / _
ē → ɛː / _
o → ɔ / _
ō → ɔː / _
u → u / _
ū → uː / _

Phoneme Frequency

Distribution of phonemes across 513 transcribed dictionary entries (3,128 total tokens)

/ä/
722 (23.1%)
/n/
361 (11.5%)
/ɛ/
288 (9.2%)
/ɹ/
252 (8.1%)
/h/
226 (7.2%)
/t/
180 (5.8%)
/d/
159 (5.1%)
/m/
158 (5.1%)
/k/
148 (4.7%)
/l/
143 (4.6%)
/ɔ/
120 (3.8%)
/b/
106 (3.4%)
/u/
104 (3.3%)
/q/
79 (2.5%)
/s/
18 (0.6%)
/äː/
17 (0.5%)
/ǃ/
10 (0.3%)
/ǀ/
7 (0.2%)
/ǁ/
6 (0.2%)
/ǂ/
6 (0.2%)
/dʒ/
5 (0.2%)
/uː/
5 (0.2%)
/ʘ/
5 (0.2%)
/ɛː/
2 (0.1%)
/w/
1 (0%)