Last Updated: 2020-06-30
Background
Language Family: Niger-Congo / Atlantic-Congo / Volta-Congo / Benue-Congo / Bantoid / Southern Bantoid / Narrow Bantu / Mbam / West Mbam / Nomaande
- The language is also known as Mandi and is spoken in the Centre and Littoral regions of Cameroon.
Phonology
Consonants
- /p/ exists in free variation with /b/ (Wilkendorf 1998, 6; Boyd 2015, 39).
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Labial
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Alveolar
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Postalveolar
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Palatal
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops
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p ᵐb
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t ⁿd
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k ᵑɡ
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ʔ
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Affricates
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tʃ ᶮdʃ
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Fricatives
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f
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s
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n
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ɲ
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ŋ
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Approximants
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w
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l
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j
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Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. Phonemes that contain the diacritics /ᵐ/, /ⁿ/, /ᶮ/, and /ᵑ/ are prenasalized.
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Vowels
- Vowel length is contrastive in Nomaande. Wilkendorf argues that only non-front vowels are present in long forms (Wilkendorf 1998, 6; Wilkendorf 2004, 4); however, Boyd (2015) argues for all vowels being able to be long (p. 43), and her analysis is better borne out by the corpus. Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel character (Wilkendorf 1998, 6).
- The vowel that I have written as /ɨ/ has varying interpretations: Wilkendorf (1998) argues for /ɨ/ (p. 6), Wilkendorf (2004) argues for /ə/ (p. 3), and Boyd (2015) argues for /ɪ/ (p. 42). I have preferred /ɨ/ as a middle ground, which captures some aspects of each of the different interpretations.
- Boyd (2015) argues for a contrastive /ʊ/ (p. 42), but this does not appear to be a widely held opinion.
- Nomaande has two tones: high and low (Wilkendorf 1998, 6). High tones are marked with an acute accent (´) on the vowel; low tones are unmarked (Wilkendorf 2004, 4).
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Front
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Central
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Back
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High
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i
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ɨ
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u
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High-Mid
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o
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Low-Mid
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ɛ
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ɔ
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Low
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a
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Alphabet
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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Comment
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a
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/a/
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b
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/p/
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c
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/tʃ/
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e
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/ɨ/
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ɛ
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/ɛ/
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f
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/f/
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h
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/h/
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i
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/i/
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k
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/k/
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l
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/l/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n/
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ŋ
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/ŋ/
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o
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/o/
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ɔ
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/ɔ/
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s
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/s/
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t
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/t/
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u
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/u/
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w
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/w/
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y
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/j/
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’
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/ʔ/
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rare
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Digraph
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mb
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/ᵐb/
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nd
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/ⁿd/
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nj
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/ᶮdʒ/
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ny
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/ɲ/
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ŋg
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/ᵑɡ/
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Lenition Rules
- Wilkendorf (1998) argues for an allophonic process where post-nasal stops gain voicing, rather than interpreting the prenasalized stops as independent phonemes (p. 6).
Misc. Rules
- When non-identical vowels are adjacent, the first vowel in the cluster is realized instead as a glide (Boyd 2015, 54–56).
- Word-final vowels are often deleted (Wilkendorf 2004, 5).
References
Boyd, Virginia Lee. 2015. “The phonological systems of the Mbam languages of Cameroon with a Focus on Vowels and Vowel Harmony.” PhD thesis, Leiden University.
Wilkendorf, Patricia. 1998. “Sketch Grammar of Nɔmaándɛ́.” SIL International.
———. 2004. “Exposé de L’alphabet et de L’orthographe Du Nomaande.” SIL International.