Dialects Gouno | Native speakers (22,500 cited 1981) ISO 639-3 gim | |
Language family Trans–New GuineaKainantu–GorokaGorokaGimi | ||
Gimi (Labogai) is a Papuan language spoken in Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea.
Contents
Phonology
Gimi has 5 vowels and 12 consonants. It has voiceless and voiced glottal consonants where related languages have /k/ and /ɡ/. The voiceless glottal is simply a glottal stop [ʔ]. The voiced consonant behaves phonologically like a glottal stop, but does not have full closure. Phonetically it is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant [ʔ̞].
Allophony
/p/ occurs word initially only in loanwords.
/b/ can surface as either [b] or [β] in free variation.
/z/ becomes [s] before /ɑ/.
/t/ and /ɾ/ tend to fluctuate with one another word initially.
Syllables
The syllable structure is (C)V(G), where G is either /ʔ/ or /ʔ̞/.
Tone
The final vowel of a word takes either a level or falling tone. The falling tone is written with an acute accent.
Orthography
Gimi uses the Latin script.