Oku language

Oku (Ebkuo, Ekpwo, Ukfwo, Bvukoo, Kuɔ) is a Grassfields Bantoid language that is primarily spoken by the Oku people of northwest Cameroon, a fondom of the Tikar people.^{[citation needed]} They are a different ethnic group from the Oku people of Sierra Leone.

Oku
Kuɔ
Native to	Cameroon
Native speakers	87,000 (from the 2005 census)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Grassfields Ring Center Oku
Language codes
ISO 639-3	oku
Glottolog	okuu1243

Phonology

Consonants

Oku has 21 consonant phonemes.^[2] The consonant phoneme inventory of the language is shown below.

		Labial		Alveolar		Palatal	Velar
							Plain	Labialized
Stop/Affricate	voiceless			/t/		/t͡ʃ/	/k/	/kʷ/
	voiced	/b/		/d/		/d͡ʒ/	/g/	/gʷ/
Fricative	voiceless	/f/		/s/
	voiced						/ɣ/	/ɣʷ/
Nasal		/m/	/m̩/[a]	/n/	//N//[b]		/ŋ/
Lateral				/l/
Glide						/j/		/w/

1. a syllabic /m/
2. an archiphoneme that only appears stem-initially

Davis argues that Oku has five nasal phonemes. These are three non-syllabic nasals (/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/), syllabic /m̩/, and archiphonemic //N//.^[2] /m̩/ does not assimilate to the following consonant. However //N// assimilates before all consonants except /f/, /t͡ʃ/, and /d͡ʒ/, where it becomes /n/. ^[2]

Vowels

Davis describes the following vowels in her thesis.^[2]

		Front		Back
				Unrounded		Rounded
High	Tense	/i/	/iː/			/u/	/uː/
	Lax	/ɪ/	/ɪː/
Mid	Tense			/ə/	/əː/
	Lax	/ɛ/	/ɛː/			/ɔ/	/ɔː/
Low				/ɑ/	/ɑː/

Orthography

The Oku alphabet has 25 letters.^[3]

a

b

ch

d

dz

e

ɛ

ə

f

g

gh

i

j

k

l

m

n

ŋ

o

p

s

t

w

y

z