| Tamambo | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Vanuatu | |||
| Region | Malo Island, Espiritu Santo | |||
| Native speakers | 3,000 (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Austronesian
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | mla | |||
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Tamambo is an Oceanic language spoken by at least 3,000 people on Malo and nearby islands in Vanuatu.
Contents |
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i | u |
| Mid | e | o |
| Low | a |
/i u/ become [j w] respectively when unstressed and before another vowel. /o/ may also become [w] for some speakers.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labiovelarized | |||||
| Nasal | m | mʷ | n | ŋ | ||
| Stop | prenasalized | ᵐb | ᵐbʷ | ⁿd | ᶮɟ | |
| plain | t | k | ||||
| Fricative | voiced | β | βʷ | x | ||
| voiceless | s | |||||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
The prenasalized postalveolar stop /ᶮɟ/ is often affricated and voiceless, i.e. [ᶮtʃ].
Younger speakers often realize /β/ as [f] initially and [v] medially, while /βʷ/ is often replaced by [w].
/x/ is usually realized as [x] initially, but some speakers use [h]. Medially, it may be pronounced as any of [x ɣ h ɦ ɡ].
Few speakers of Tamambo are literate, and there is no standard orthography. Spelling conventions used include:
| Phoneme | Representation |
|---|---|
| /ᵐb/ | B initially, mb medially. |
| /ᵐbʷ/ | Bu or bw initially, mbu or mbw medially. |
| /x/ | C or h. |
| /ⁿd/ | D initially, nd medially. |
| /ᶮɟ/ | J initially, nj medially. |
| /k/ | K. |
| /l/ | L. |
| /m/ | M. |
| /mʷ/ | Mu or mw. |
| /n/ | N. |
| /ŋ/ | Ng. |
| /r/ | R. |
| /s/ | S. |
| /t/ | T. |
| /β/ | V. |
| /βʷ/ | Vu or w. |