Shubi language

Not to be confused with Subi language.

Shubi is a Bantu language spoken by the Shubi people in north-western Tanzania. It may use labiodental plosives /p̪/, /b̪/ (sometimes written ȹ, ȸ) as phonemes, rather than as allophones of /p, b/. Peter Ladefoged wrote:

We have heard labiodental stops made by a Shubi speaker whose teeth were sufficiently close together to allow him to make an airtight labiodental closure. For this speaker this sound was clearly in contrast with a bilabial stop; but we suspect that the majority of Shubi speakers make the contrast one of bilabial stop versus labial-labiodental affricate (i.e. bilabial stop closure followed by a labiodental fricative), rather than bilabial versus labiodental stop.^[3]

Shubi
Region	Kagera Region in Tanzania
Ethnicity	Shubi people
Native speakers	(153,000 cited 1987)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Ruanda-Rundi Hangaza-Shubi Shubi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	suj
Glottolog	shub1238
Guthrie code	JD.64[2]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.