Tarama language

Vowels

Tarama has four main vowels, and three marginal vowels /e, ə, o/ found in a restricted set of words.

/ɨ/ is [s̩] between voiceless consonants, otherwise [ˢɨ] after plosives, and [ɨ] elsewhere:

[ps̩tu] 'person', [kˢɨːlu] 'yellow', [mɨːɡɨ] 'right'

See also Miyakoan language#Vowels, for information on the close central vowel.

The sequences /*tɨ/, /*dɨ/, /*nɨ/, /*lɨ/ do not occur. They have changed to /tsɨ/, /zɨ/, /n̩/ and /l/ ([ɭ̆]).

Consonants

Tarama does have voiced stops:

The 'l' is a retroflex lateral flap, also found in the Irabu language (Jarosz p. 43). /m n f v s z l/ occur as syllable codas, as in pail 'to grow' (Japanese haeru), psks 'to pull' (Japanese hiku).

The two nasals may be syllabic, as in mm 'potato' and nna 'rope'. 'Onsets' include geminate consonants, as in ssam 'loose' and ffa 'child'. Otherwise, the only consonant clusters are /Cj/, as in kjuu 'today', sjata 'sugar'. Sonorants can end syllables and words, as in kan 'crab', mim 'ear', and tul 'bird'. Vowel sequences include long vowels Vː and the 'diphthongs' Vi, and Vɨ. This structure has been analyzed as a syllable, but initial geminate consonants, long vowels and diphthongs are all bimoraic, and codas are moraic as well, so that e.g. ssam is three moras ([s̩sam̩]. A phonological word must be at least two moras long.