User:Jiminy Krikkitt/Sandpit

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[edit] Yoruba phonology

Yoruba has seven oral vowels and four nasal vowels, of which /ɛ̃/ is quite rare.

	ORAL VOWELS			NASAL VOWELS
	IPA	Written	Examples	IPA	Written	Examples
open front unrounded vowel	a	a	Fr. chat, Yoruba ara "body"	(nasal an is an allophone of ọn)
close-mid front unrounded vowel	e	e	Fr. été, Yoruba eré "game"
open-mid front unrounded vowel	ɛ	ẹ	Eng. bet, Yoruba jẹ "eat"	ɛ̃	ẹn	Yoruba ìyen "that"
close front unrounded vowel	i	i	Eng. élite, Yoruba mi "mine"	ĩ	in	Yoruba ẹẹ́rin "four"
close-mid back rounded vowel	o	o	Fr. beau, Yoruba ìkoko "ladle"
open-mid back rounded vowel	ɔ	ọ	Eng. port, Yoruba ọkọ "farm"	ɔ̃	ọn	Yoruba àgbọn "coconut"
close back rounded vowel	u	u	Eng. boot, Yoruba mu "drink"	ũ	un	Yoruba ọdún "year"

[edit] Consonants

Like many other African languages, Yoruba uses labial-velar stops /k͡p/ and /g͡b/, where stops are pronounced at both places of articulation simultaneously, and in fact lacks a simple voiceless bilabial plosive (p in English). Unusually, it also lacks a phoneme /n/; though the letter <n> is used for the sound in the orthography, it strictly speaking refers to an allophone of /l/ which immediately precedes a nasal vowel.

Where the standard Yoruba letter used for a sound differs from its IPA symbol, the former is given in <angle brackets>.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalv.	Palatal	Velar	Labial-velar	Glottal
Stop	b		t d			k g	k͡p <p> g͡b <gb>
Nasal	m <m, n, ng>		(n <n>)
Tap			ɾ <r>
Fricative		f	s	ʃ <ṣ>				h
Affricate				ʤ <j>
Lateral			l
Approximant					j <y>		w