Maninka language

Phonology

The Wudala dialect of Eastern Maninka, spoken in the central highlands of Guinea and comprehensible to speakers of all dialects in that country, has the following phonemic inventory. (Apart from tone, which is not written, sounds are given in orthography, as IPA values are not certain.)

Tones

There are four tones: high, low, rising and falling

The marker for definiteness is a falling floating tone:

'a bird' (LL), 'the bird' (LLHL, perhaps )

'a belly' (HL), 'the belly' (HLHL, perhaps )

Vowels

Vowel qualities are . All may be long or short, oral or nasal: and . (It may be that all nasal vowels are long.) Nasal vowels nasalize some following consonants.

Consonants

/d/ typically becomes a flap [ɾ] between vowels. /c/ (also written ⟨ty⟩) often becomes /k/ before the vowels /i/ or /ɛ/. There is regional variation between /g/ and the labial–velar /g͡b/. /h/ occurs mostly in Arabic loans, and is established. /p/ occurs in French and English loans, and is in the process of stabilizing.

Several voiced consonants become nasals after a nasal vowel. /b/ becomes /m/, /j/ becomes /ɲ/, and /l/ becomes /n/. For example, nouns ending in oral vowels take the plural in -lu; nouns ending in nasal vowels take -nu. However, /d/ remains oral, as in /nde/ "I, me".