Mák’ai-wa


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The Mák’ai-wa language (IPA: /mákʼɐ̀ɪwɐ̀/,  literally 'people's language'), sometimes anglicised as Mak'ai-wa or Mak'aiwa, is a Mtasaic language spoken in central Mtasai. It is a polysynthetic language with a system of split ergativity, largely free word order, and complex verbal declension.

Consonants
The Mák’ai-wa language has a consonant inventory consisting of five places and five manners of articulation, along with a lateral/central distinction for approximants. Mák’ai-wa employs both pulmonic and non-pulmonic ejective consonants. Modal voice is its only form of phonation, although creaky voice may sometimes occur allophonically in low tones (see section on tone below). Oral stops and ejectives come in contrasting aspirated/unaspirated pairs, with aspirated stops having an average voice onset lag of approximately 150 milliseconds and unaspirated stops an average lag of approximately 15 milliseconds. True voicing is only contrastive for nasals, which come in voiced/devoiced pairs. These contrasts are summarised in the table below. Note that the orthographic representation of each phoneme is given in angled brackets before the corrosponding IPA symbol.