Mwakai language

The name "Mongol" is from Tok Pisin and refers to a village where the language is spoken. Native speakers call the language mwa or mwakai, which mean 'no' or 'nothing'.^[2]

It is spoken in the villages of Mongol (4.262293°S 143.917638°E / -4.262293; 143.917638 (Mongol), Mongol: Amngwar^[2]) and Kaimbal,^[2] Keram Rural LLG, East Sepik Province.^[3][4] Many residents of these villages moved to the town of Angoram in the 1970s.^[2]

Mwakai has 12 consonants and six vowels, shown in the tables below. This section follows Barlow (2020).^[2]

The sound [t] only occurs in borrowings, with earlier */t/ having historically become /r/; this is belied by the realisation of word-final /r/ as [t~r~l]. /s/ patterns as a palatal consonant, with the optional allophone [ʃ]; there is some interplay between the sounds /s/ and /ⁿd͡ʒ/ in casual speech, with the contrast sometimes being neutralised in favour or either realisation. [ɲ] is a marginal phone which appears in borrowings and occasional as a realisation of /n/ before /i/. /r/ varies between [r ~ ɾ ~ l] and /p/ is occasionally realised as [ɸ].

/w/ and /j/ have a limited distribution, appearing mostly word-initially or -finally, and only rarely intervocalically. Some instances of /j/ and most instances of /w/ may be merely epenthetic, suggesting that Mwakai is in the process of losing its glide phonemes.

/i u e/ are rarely realised as their cardinal qualities and may approach [ɨ~ɪ ɨ~ʊ ɛ~ə], especially when unstressed.