View text source at Wikipedia
Yambeta | |
---|---|
Native to | Cameroon |
Native speakers | (3,700 cited 1982)[1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | yat |
Glottolog | yamb1252 |
A.462 [2] |
Yambeta or Nigi[3] is a Southern Bantoid language of Cameroon.
There are 20 contrastive consonants in Yambeta.
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stop | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | ʔ | |
Prenasalized | Voiceless | ⁿt | ⁿk | |||
Voiced | ⁿb | ⁿd | ⁿg | |||
Fricatives | f | s | h | |||
Nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
Approximants | l | j | w |
The glottal stop occurs only in word-final position and is elided intervocalically. All other consonants, except /t͡ʃ/ and /w/ as well as the prenasalized stops, may be word-final. All stops are voiceless word-initial and word-final, and voiced intervocalically or following a nasal.
There are two vowel sets in Yambeta. The most common noun syllable structure is CVC.[4]
+ATR | -ATR | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Front | Mid | Back | Front | Mid | Back | |||||||
Short | Long | Short | Long | Short | Long | Short | Long | Short | Long | Short | Long | |
Close | ɪ | ɪː | ʊ | ʊː | i | iː | u | uː | ||||
Close-mid | ə | əː | o | oː | ||||||||
Open-mid | ɔ | ɔː | ||||||||||
Open | a | aː |