In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are, and, in words such as nose, bring and mouth. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages.
Ewe is a language spoken by approximately 20 million people in West Africa, mainly in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and also in some other countries like Liberia and southwestern Nigeria. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called the Gbe languages. The other major Gbe language is Fon, which is mainly spoken in Benin. Like many African languages, Ewe is tonal as well as a possible member of the Niger-Congo family.
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. Examples of archetypal nasal sounds include and.
The phonology of Portuguese varies among dialects, in extreme cases leading to some difficulties in intelligibility. Portuguese is a pluricentric language and has some of the most diverse sound variations of any language. This article on phonology focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language—and differences between European Portuguese (EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP), and Angolan Portuguese (AP) can be considerable—varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.
Fon is the language of the Fon people. It belongs to the Gbe group within the larger Atlantic-Congo family. It is primarily spoken in Benin, as well as in Nigeria, Togo, Ghana and Gabon, by approximately 1.9 million speakers. Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an isolating language with a SVO basic word order.
The Gbe languages form a cluster of about twenty related languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe language is Ewe, followed by Fon. The Gbe languages were traditionally placed in the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo languages, but more recently have been classified as Volta–Niger languages. They include five major dialect clusters: Ewe, Fon, Aja, Gen (Mina), Gun and Phla–Pherá.
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered by consonant loss may be considered an extreme form of fusion. Both types may arise from speakers' attempts to preserve a word's moraic count.
The Yele language, or Yélî Dnye, is the language of Rossel Island, the easternmost island in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. There were some 4,000 speakers in 1998, comprising the entire ethnic population. The language remains unclassified by linguists.
The phonology of Sesotho and those of the other Sotho–Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular has very mixed origins inheriting many words and idioms from non-Sotho–Tswana languages.
Urhobo is a South-Western Edoid language spoken by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria. It is from the Delta and Bayelsa States.
Yeyi is a Bantu language spoken by many of the approximately 50,000 Yeyi people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana. Yeyi, influenced by Juu languages, is one of several Bantu languages along the Okavango with clicks. Indeed, it has the largest known inventory of clicks of any Bantu language, with dental, alveolar, palatal, and lateral articulations. Though most of its older speakers prefer Yeyi in normal conversation, it is being gradually phased out in Botswana by a popular move towards Tswana, with Yeyi only being learned by children in a few villages. Yeyi speakers in the Caprivi Strip of north-eastern Namibia, however, retain Yeyi in villages, but may also speak the regional lingua franca, Lozi.
Gun is a language in the Gbe languages group. It is spoken by the Ogu people in Benin, as well as in south-western Nigeria. Gun is part of the Fon cluster of languages inside the Eastern Gbe languages; it is close to Fon, especially its Agbome and Kpase varieties, as well as to the Maxi and Weme (Ouémé) languages. It is used in some schools in the Ouémé Department of Benin.
Ndrumbea, variously spelled Ndumbea, Dubea, Drubea and Païta, is a New Caledonian language that gave its name to the capital of New Caledonia, Nouméa, and the neighboring town of Dumbéa. It has been displaced to villages outside the capital, with fewer than a thousand speakers remaining. Gordon (1995) estimates that there may only be two or three hundred. The Dubea are the people; the language has been called Naa Dubea "language of Dubea".
Fulniô, or Yatê, is a language isolate of Brazil, and the only indigenous language remaining in the northeastern part of that country. The two dialects, Fulniô and Yatê, are very close. The Fulniô dialect is used primarily during a three-month religious retreat. Today, the language is spoken in Águas Belas, Pernambuco.
The Xerénte or Akwẽ-Xerénte language is an Akuwẽ language of Brazil. It is spoken by the Xerente people in the Tocantins state between Rio do Sono and Rio Tocantins.
Xokleng or Laklãnõ is a Southern Jê language spoken by the Xokleng people of Brazil. It is closely related to Kaingang.
Palikúr is an Arawakan language of Brazil and French Guiana. Knowledge of French and Portuguese is common, and French Guianese Creole is used as the common language among the tribes in the area and with the local population. Palikúr is considered endangered in French Guiana and vulnerable in Brazil.
Nasal clicks are click consonants pronounced with nasal airflow. All click types have nasal variants, and these are attested in four or five phonations: voiced, voiceless, aspirated, murmured, and—in the analysis of Miller (2011)—glottalized.
French exhibits perhaps the most extensive phonetic changes of any of the Romance languages. Similar changes are seen in some of the northern Italian regional languages, such as Lombard or Ligurian. Most other Romance languages are significantly more conservative phonetically, with Spanish, Italian, and especially Sardinian showing the most conservatism, and Portuguese, Occitan, Catalan, and Romanian showing moderate conservatism.
Medumba phonology is the way in which the Medumba language is pronounced. It deals with phonetics, phonotactics and their variation across different dialects of Medumba.
