Tukang Besi language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tukang Besi
Native to Indonesia
Region Sulawesi, Tukang Besi Archipelago
Native speakers
250,000  (1995)[1]
Austronesian
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
khc  Tukang Besi North
bhq  Tukang Besi South

Tukang Besi is an Austronesian language spoken in the Tukangbesi Islands in south-east Sulawesi in Indonesia by some 200,000 speakers.

Sounds

The vowel phonemes of Tukang Besi

The northern dialect of Tukang Besi has 25 consonant phonemes and a basic 5-vowel system.[2] It features stress which is usually on the second-to-last syllable. The language has two implosive consonants, which are uncommon in the world's languages. The coronal plosives and /s/ have prenasalized counterparts which act as separate phonemes.

Bilabial Dental/
Alveolar
Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive plain p b () k ɡ ʔ
prenasalized mp mb n̪t̪ n̪d̪ ŋk ŋɡ
Implosive ɓ ɗ̪
Fricative plain β s (z) h
prenasalized n̪s̪
Trill r
Lateral

/b/ only appears in loanwords, but it contrasts with /ɓ/. [d] and [z] are not phonemic and appear only as allophones of /dʒ/ which appears only in loanwords.

References

  1. Tukang Besi North reference at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
    Tukang Besi South reference at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
  2. Donohue, Mark (1999). "Tukang Besi". Handbook of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge University Press. pp. 151–53. ISBN 0-521-65236-7. 


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.