Miyako phonology

The description here is based on the Ōgami dialect, the Central Miyako dialect of the smallest of the Miyako islands, from Pellard (2009).

Central Miyako dialects do not have pitch accent; therefore, they are of ikkei type.

There are five vowels.

is truly unrounded, unlike the compressed Japanese u. It is centralized after. is rounded normally, but varies as. varies from to.

Numerous vowel sequences occur, and long vowels are treated as sequences of identical vowels, keeping the inventory at five.

Ōgami vowels are not subject to devoicing next to unvoiced consonants the way Japanese high vowels are. Thus sequences of phonetic consonants are analyzed as being phonemically consonantal as well.

There are nine consonants, without a voicing contrast. (Most Miyako dialects do distinguish voicing.)

The plosives tend to be somewhat aspirated initially and voiced medially. There are maybe a dozen words with optionally voiced initial consonants, such as babe ~ pape (a sp. of fish) and gakspstu ~ kakspstu 'wolverine', but Pellard suggests they may be loans (babe is found in other dialects, and gaks- is a Chinese loan; only a single word gama ~ kama 'grotto, cave' is not an apparent loan).

may be spirantized before : kaina 'arm', a꞊ka 'I (nominative)'.

is at the end of a word, and assimilates to succeeding consonants  before another consonant. When final geminates, it becomes ; compare tin  'silver' with tinnu  'silver (accusative)'. It tends to devoice after and. , on the other hand, does not assimilate and appears finally unchanged, as in mku 'right', mta 'earth', and im 'sea'.

is labiodental, not bilabial, and palatalizes to  before the front vowels : pssi  'cold'. Some speakers insert an epenthetic between  and  in what would otherwise be a sequence thereof, as in ansi  'thus'.

is clearly labiodental as well and tends to become a fricative when emphasized or when geminated, as in  'calf'. It can be syllabic, as can all sonorants in the Ōgami dialect: vv 'to sell'. Final contrasts with the high back vowels:  'snake',  'stick',  'fly' are accusative  with the clitic -u.

Various sequences of consonants occur (mna 'shell', sta 'under', fta 'lid'), and long consonants are bimoraic (sta fta, pstu ), so they are analyzed as consonant sequences as well. These can be typologically unusual:


 * (sp. small fruit)
 * 'now'
 * 'you'
 * 'baby'
 * 'grass'
 * 'comb.' (from ff 'comb')
 * 'vegetable'
 * 'white'
 * 'dust.' (from ss 'dust')
 * 'mother'
 * 'potato.' (from mm 'potato')
 * 'day'

Geminate plosives do not occur, apart from a single morpheme, the quotative particle tta.

There are a few words with no voiced sounds at all (compare Nuxálk language § Syllables):


 * ss 'dust, a nest, to rub'
 * kss 'breast/milk, hook / to fish, to come'
 * pss 'day, vulva'
 * ff 'a comb, to bite, to rain, to close'
 * kff 'to make'
 * fks 'to build'
 * ksks 'month, to listen, to arrive', etc.
 * sks 'to cut'
 * psks 'to pull'

The contrast between a voiceless syllable and a voiced vowel between voiceless consonants can be seen in kff puskam 'I want to make (it)', ff꞊nkɑi  'to꞊the.comb', and paks꞊nu꞊tu  'bee꞊' (with a devoiced nasal after s). There is a contrast between ff꞊mɑi 'comb꞊' and ffu꞊mɑi 'shit꞊'. With tongue twisters, speakers do not insert schwas or other voiced sounds to aid in pronunciation:


 * kff ff 'the comb that I make'
 * kff ss 'the nest that I make'
 * kff kss 'the hook that I make'

The minimal word is either VV, VC, or CC (consisting of a single geminate), as in aa 'millet', ui 'over', is 'rock', ff 'comb'. There are no V or CV words; however, CCV and CVV words are found, as shown above.

Syllabification is difficult to analyze, especially in words such as usnkai (us-nkai) 'cow-' and saiafn (saiaf-n) 'carpenter-'.