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(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 / _
e → ɛ / _
o → ɔ / _
u → u / _
ā → äː / _
ē → ɛː / _
ō → ɔː / _
ū → uː / _

Phoneme Frequency

Distribution of phonemes across 513 transcribed dictionary entries (2,987 total tokens)

/ä/
756 (25.3%)
/n/
357 (12%)
/ɛ/
290 (9.7%)
/ɹ/
253 (8.5%)
/t/
180 (6%)
/m/
158 (5.3%)
/k/
148 (5%)
/l/
147 (4.9%)
/d/
142 (4.8%)
/ɔ/
120 (4%)
/u/
109 (3.6%)
/b/
106 (3.5%)
/h/
84 (2.8%)
/q/
79 (2.6%)
/s/
18 (0.6%)
/ǃ/
10 (0.3%)
/ǀ/
7 (0.2%)
/ǁ/
6 (0.2%)
/ǂ/
6 (0.2%)
/dʒ/
5 (0.2%)
/ʘ/
5 (0.2%)
/w/
1 (0%)