Phonology
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-al. /Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | palatal. | central | lateral | plain | labial. | ||||||||||||
| Nasal | m | mʲ | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||||||
| Stop 1 | plain | p | b | t 2 | d 2 | tʃ 2 | dʒ 2 | k | ɡ | kʷ | ɡʷ | ||||||
| prenasal. | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᶮdʒ | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | ||||||||||||
| implosive | ɓ | ɓʲ | ɗ | ɠ | |||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | fʲ | vʲ | s | z | ɬ | ɮ | ʃ | ʒ | x | ɣ | xʷ | ɣʷ | h 3 | ||
| Approximant | plain | l | j | w | |||||||||||||
| glottal. | jˀ 4 | ||||||||||||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||||||||||||
- ^1 Voiceless plosives are lightly aspirated but unreleased before another consonant. [6]
- ^2 /t/ and /d/ formally had /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ respectively as allophones but the two pairs have split; however, the alveolar plosives never precede front vowels and the postalveolar affricates rarely precede anything but front vowels. [6]
- ^3 /h/ is a relatively new phoneme, appearing in loanwords from English and Hausa. [6]
- ^4 /jˀ/ derives from a /ɗʲ/ that has lost its alveolar contact while retaining the palatal and glottal action. [6]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | ɨ | u uː |
| Mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Open | a aː |
- The mid vowels /e,eː,o,oː/ are true-mid [e̞, e̞ː, o̞, o̞ː]. [7]
- The open vowels /a,aː/ are central [ä, äː]. [7]
- /ɨ/ in closed syllables is [ ɨ̞] [8]
Vowel length contrasts are neutralized in monosyllabic words with no coda consonants. [7]
All vowels but /a/ and /aː/ are more open in closed syllables such as in [ɮɛp] ('to plait') and [xʊ́r] ('to cook soup'). /a/ and /aː/ tend to be fronted to [æ, æː] when following palatalized consonants. [9]
Diphthongs, which have the same length as long vowels, consist of a non-high vowel and a high vowel: [9]
| Diphthong | Example | Orthography | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| /eu/ | /ɓeu/ | ɓeu | 'sour' |
| /oi/ | /woi/ | woi | 'child' |
| /ai/ | /ɣài/ | ghai | 'town' |
| /au/ | /ɮàu/ | dlau | 'sickle' |
- Phonetically, these diphthongs are [e̞ʊ,o̞ɪ,ɐɪ,ɐʊ]. [9]
Tone
Tera is a tonal language, distinguishing high, mid and low tone. Tone is not indicated orthographically since no minimal trios exist; minimal pairs can be distinguished by context. [10]
