Kómnzo language


'''Komnzo is a Yam language of Papua New Guinea spoken by 150–250 people in the village of Rouku and the town of Morehead.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory comprises 18 phonemes. The system consists of a series of obstruents, fricatives, nasals and semivowels. Consonants occurring only in loanwords are: b, g, d, l.

Vowels

The vowel inventory consists of eight phonemes and one epenthetic vowel.

Epenthesis

Komnzo phonology exhibits widespread vowel epenthesis. The epenthetic vowel is usually a short schwa, sometimes a short high front or high back vowel. Many syllables and many words in Komnzo lack a specified vowel, e.g. mnz 'house' or gwth 'nest' .

Orthography

In the tables above, graphemes are indicated by <angle brackets>. The current orthography of Komnzo does not represent the epenthetic vowel because it can be predicted by the rules of syllabification. This leads to orthographic representations which untrained users might find hard to pronounce, for example: zfth 'reason' is pronounced or fta '36' is pronounced .

Numeral system

Komnzo number words use a senary numeral system, with the following numerals: nibo, fta, taruba, damno, wärämäkä and wi. Counting in larger quantities is restricted to a ritualized counting procedure, whereby yam tubers are counted publicly for exchange feasts. For everyday counting above six, English numerals are borrowed.
KomnzoEnglishvalue
näbi‘one’1
eda ~ yda‘two’2
etha ~ ytho‘three’3
asar‘four’4
tabuthui‘five’5
nibo‘six’6
nibo a näbi'seven'6 and 1
nibo a eda'eight'6 and 2
fta‘36’62
taruba‘216’63
damno‘1296’64
wärämäkä‘7776’65
wi'46656'66