Nyole phonology

Consonants
Nyole has series of voiceless, voiced, and prenasalized stops. is labio-velar.

Historical changes
Nyole has an interesting development from Proto-Bantu *p → Nyole. Schadeberg (1989) connects this sound change to rhinoglottophilia, where the sound change developed first as →  →. Then, given the acoustic similarity of and breathy voice to nasalization, the sound change progressed as  →  →. The velar place of articulation development is due to velar nasals being the least perceptible of the nasals and its marginal status in (pre-)Nyole and other Bantu languages. In closely related neighboring languages, *p developed variously into or  or was deleted.

This historical development results in so-called "crazy" alternations, like resulting in  as in the following:


 * n-ŋuliira ("hear" stem form) : puliira "I hear"
 * n-ŋumula ("rest" stem form) : pumula "I rest"

In the above two words, when the first person singular subject prefix is added to the stem starting with, the initial consonant surfaces as. In other forms (like "to hear" and  "to rest"), the original stem-initial  can be seen.