Phonology
Sound inventory and phonological rules
18 consonants
5 vowels
Consonant Inventory
| Manner | Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Pharyngeal | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | b | · | td | · | · | kg | ʡ | · | ||||||||
| Nasal | m | · | n | · | · | · | · | · | ||||||||
| Trill | · | · | r | · | · | · | · | · | ||||||||
| Fricative | · | f | sz | ʃʒ | · | ɣ | · | ɦ | ||||||||
| Approximant | · | · | · | · | j | · | · | · | ||||||||
| Lateral approximant | · | · | l | · | · | · | · | · | ||||||||
Vowel Inventory
| Height | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | · | u |
| Near-close | ɪ | · | ʊ |
| Open | a | · | · |
Syllable Structure
(C)VPhoneme Frequency
Distribution of phonemes across 358 transcribed dictionary entries (1,334 total tokens)
/a/
317 (23.8%)
/i/
217 (16.3%)
/u/
169 (12.7%)
/r/
88 (6.6%)
/f/
86 (6.4%)
/n/
63 (4.7%)
/s/
61 (4.6%)
/d/
51 (3.8%)
/m/
50 (3.7%)
/t/
46 (3.4%)
/j/
37 (2.8%)
/l/
37 (2.8%)
/b/
31 (2.3%)
/ɓ/
22 (1.6%)
/̥/
22 (1.6%)
/z/
22 (1.6%)
/nʷ/
9 (0.7%)
/g/
6 (0.4%)