Nauhi

Phonology
Nauhi has a small phonemic inventory consisting of the following 3 vowels and 9 consonants (allophones belonging to the same phoneme are separated by a tilde):

Diphthongs: /ai~ae/, /au~ao/, /ui~ue/, /ua/.

Allophony

1. /i~e/ and /u~o/ are realized as [e] and [o] when occurring before uvular consonants, and as [i] and [u] elsewhere.

2. /p~b/, /t~d/, /k~g/ and /h~ɦ/ are voiced ([b], [d], [g] and [ɦ]) when occurring between two vowels within a word, and are voiceless ([p], [t], [k] and [h]) elsewhere.

3. /m~n~l~ŋ~ɴ/ is realized as [l] between two vowels within a word, as [m] before labial consonants, as [ŋ] before the velar [k], as [ɴ] before the uvular /ɢ/, and as /n/ elsewhere.

4. /ɹ~ɾ/ is realized as [ɾ] between two vowels within a word, and as [ɹ] elsewhere.

Phonotactic constraints

1. Words never start in a vowel or in the consonants /w/, /ɢ/ or /ʁ̞/.

2. Over 96% of words end in a vowel. The only word-final consonant that can occur is /ʁ̞/.

3. Diphthongs are limited to stressed syllables.

4. Consonant clusters are limited to a length of two consonants and only occur word-medially.

5. Vowel clusters do not occur (adjacent vowel qualities are always pronounced as a diphthong).

6. Root words do not exceed three syllables in length.

Word stress

Stress in Nauhi words is fairly weak and is also not phonemically contrastive. Stress is always predictable and falls on the penultimate syllable when the word has more than one syllable.

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