Vanimo language


Vanimo is a Skou language of Papua New Guinea which extends from Leitre to Wutung on the Papua New Guinea - Indonesian border.

Phonology

The Duso dialect of Vanimo is unusual in not having any phonemic velar consonants, though it does have phonetic.
The vowels of Dumo dialect are,
iu
e~eiø o
ɛ~æɔ
a

All occur nasalized, varying phonetically between a nasal vowel and a vowel followed by consonantal. Nasal /u/ may be realized as a syllabic.
In Dumo, there are no velar consonants apart from this . The other consonants are,
p~ɸt
bdj~dʲ~d͡ʒ
β~wsɦ
mnɲ
l

Consonant clusters are /pl, bl, ml, ɲv, hv, hm, hn, hɲ, hj/. /ɲv/ is pronounced. There are no coda consonants apart from.
do occur in Dusö dialect. They correspond to or zero in Dumo.
Dumo syllables may have either a 'high' or a 'long' tone. There is strict syllable timing, a 'long'-toned syllable takes the entire time allotted for a syllable, whereas with a high-tone or atonic syllable, there is a slight gap between it and the following syllable. Ross writes high tone with a grave accent, and long tone with an acute accent. A syllable with a nasal vowel / coda is not necessarily long,, it may have any of the three tones.