Nukak language

The Nukak language, or pejoratively Nukak Makú, is the language of the Nukak people. Other than being very closely related to Kakwa, it is of uncertain classification, perhaps part of the Puinave-Maku family. There are six oral and six nasal vowels. The vowel [u] becomes the labial semivowel [w] in several environments: in postnuclear position (when it appears immediately after the nuclear vowel of a morpheme), before another vowel, and at the beginning of the word or syllable. The semivowel [w] is devoiced (IPA symbol [ʍ]) if the tone rises and the following vowel is [i], [ĩ], [ɨ]. The vowel [i] becomes the palatal semivowel [j] in postnuclear position. Nasalization in Nukak language is a prosodic property of the morpheme that affects all segments within each morpheme except voiceless stops. Each morpheme is either completely nasal or completely oral. There are eleven consonant phonemes: /p/; /b/ (realized as [m] with a nasal vowel, otherwise as [mb] at the start of a word, and as [bm] at the end of a word); /t/; /d/ (realized as [n] with a nasal vowel, otherwise as [nd] at the start of a word, and as [dn] at the end of a word); /tʃ/ (realized as [ts] or [tʃ] in free variation); /ɟ/ (realized as [ɲ] in a nasal environment); /k/; /ɡ/ (realized as [ŋ] in a nasal environment); /ɺ/ (lateral sonorant, alternating with the approximant [ɹ], the tap [ɾ], and the lateral approximant [l]); /h/; /ʔ/ (the glottal stop). The following table of consonant phonemes shows each phoneme followed by the corresponding letter in the Nukak alphabet, where different. /ɺ/ is pronounced [t] when followed by /t/ and [d] when preceded by a voiced consonant.