Tenetehara phonetics and phonology

Tenetehára has a total of 21 phonemes: 14 consonants and 7 vowels. Each of the consonantal phonemes occurs as the initial C in CV and CVC syllables, while each of the vowels occurs as the nucleus in the four syllable patterns. Any phoneme of the class /t k m n ŋ w z r/ may occur in the syllable and word final C position, while /p k^w c ŋ^w ' h/ are limited in their distribution in that they do not occur in the final C position. Similarly, /ŋ ŋ^w/ have a somewhat limited distribution in that they never occur word-initially.

Consonants in Tenetehára

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labial-velar	Glottal
Stop	p	t			k	kʷ	ʔ
Affricate		ts
Fricative			z				h
Flap			ɾ
Nasal	m		n		ŋ	ŋʷ
Approximant				j		w

Vowels in Tenetehára

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	ɛ	ə	ɔ
Low		a

Tembe

Consonants in the Tembe dialect

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labial-velar	Glottal
Stop	plain	p	t			k	kʷ	ʔ
	voiced		d
Fricative				s				h
Flap				ɾ
Nasal		m		n		ŋ	ŋʷ
Approximant					j		w

Vowels in the Tembe dialect

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		a

External links

• Tenetehara language