Cipu phonology

The most common syllable type in Cicipu is CV, although there are fairly strong arguments for N and CVN. A small number of noun and verb roots begin with a V syllable. Lexical tone contrasts are found in nouns e.g. káayá ‘house’ and káayà ‘bean’, but not in verbs (although grammatical tone is important for verbs).

Vowels

Cicipu has an asymmetric six-vowel system. All vowels can be long or short, and all have nasalised counterparts. There are four diphthongs: /ei/, /eu/, /ai/ and /au/.

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back
Close	i, iː		u, uː
Close-mid	e, eː		o, oː
Open-mid			ɔ, ɔː
Open		a, aː

Consonants

Consonant length is contrastive in Cicipu, e.g. yuwo 'fall' vs. yuwwo 'turn around'. Any consonant may be lengthened.

Consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental or alveolar	Postalveolar or palatal	Velar		Glottal
					Plain	Labialized	Palatalized	Plain	Labialized
Plosives and affricates	Voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k	kʷ	ʔʲ	ʔ	ʔʷ
	Voiced	b	d	dʒ	ɡ	ɡʷ
	Implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Fricatives	Voiceless		s				hʲ	h	hʷ
	Voiced	v	z
Nasals		m	n
Rhotic			ɾ
Approximants			l	j		w

External links

• Cipu language