Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Gimi language
Papuan language From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Gimi, also known as Labogai, is a Papuan language spoken in the Eastern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea. 23,000 speakers (2000 cited) speak the Gimi language.
Remove ads
Phonology
Gimi has 5 vowels and 12 consonants.[2] It has voiceless and voiced glottal consonants where related languages have /k/ and /ɡ/. The voiceless glottal is simply a glottal stop [ʔ]. The voiced consonant behaves phonologically like a glottal stop, but does not have full closure. Phonetically it is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant [ʔ̞].[3]
Vowels
Consonants
Allophony
/p/ occurs word initially only in loanwords.
/b/ can surface as either [b] or [β] in free variation.
/z/ becomes [s] before /ɑ/.
/t/ and /ɾ/ tend to fluctuate with one another word initially.
Syllables
The syllable structure is (C)V(G), where G is either /ʔ/ or /ʔ̞/.
Tone
The final vowel of a word takes either a level or falling tone. The falling tone is written with an acute accent.
ak "seed" | ák "armband" | ||
nimi "bird" | nimí "louse" |
Remove ads
Orthography
Gimi uses the Latin script.[2]
References
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads