Ngehu

Ngehu (also called Lo Ngehu or simply Hu) is the main language spoken by the Ngehu people of Awa. Although little is known of the history of the language, both its oral history and its unusual structure point towards an origin as a consciously constructed language.

It is a right-branching, strongly isolating language, notable for its largely oligoanalytic lexicon, its complete lack of verbs other than the non-inflecting copula i, and the lack of any contrastive voicing, with all phonemes except /h/ being voiced. The lexicon is made up entirely of around 190 syllabic roots with a single basic meaning and these are combined in various ways to make more precise meanings. For example, the root zwa has the core meaning of 'water' but may, when qualified by other roots, refer to other liquids. Ni means, as its central meaning, 'air' or 'gas' but may also mean 'quality' or 'characteristic' (much as the word 'air'does in English as in 'an air of superiority') or simply anything that is invisible. Together these roots may be combined to form zwani 'rain' (a type of water defined by something to do with air, namely that it falls from it) or nizwa 'cloud, fog, mist' (a type of air defined by something to do with water, namely that it is filled with it).

Phonology

Because of the differing oral anatomy of the Hu, the exact phonology of Lo Ngehu is difficult to replicate accurately in the non-Hu mouth. The underbite and tusks (protruding lower canines) of the Hu make it difficult for them to pronounce labiodental sounds such as /f/ and /v/ in English, in which the lower lip touches the upper teeth. They do, however, possess a dentolabial sound /v͆/, whereby the upper lip makes contact with the lower teeth. Non-Hu learners of Lo Ngehu will be perfectly understood pronouncing this sound labiodentally. Likewise, the rounding of the vowels /o/ and /u/ as well as the consonant /w/ is not identical to the rounding performed with non-Hu lips. These differences are small enough to more or less be ignored by the non-Hu learner of Hu.

Consonants

All consonants of Lo Ngehu are voiced aside from /h/.

	Bilabial	Dentolabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	b /b/		d /d~ɾ/	(dy [d͡ʒ])	g /ɡ/
Nasal	m /m/		n /n/		ng /ŋ/
Prenasalised plosive	mb /mb/		nd /nd/	(ndy [nd͡ʒ])	ngg /ŋɡ/
Fricative		v /v͆/	z /z/	(zy [ʒ])		h /h~ɦ/
Lateral			l /l/
Semivowel				y /j/	w /w/

The prenasalised stops /^mb/, /ⁿd/ and /^ŋɡ/ are pronounced with an unstressed syllabic nasal when utterance initial. Otherwise, the nasal component may appear to attach as a coda to the following syllable. For example, mba 'house' is [m̩.ˈba] when utterance initial but the phrase hi mba 'this house' is [him.ˈba].

The semivowel /j/ has a palatalising effect on the preceding consonant, most notably blending with /d ⁿd z/ to become [d͡ʒ ⁿd͡ʒ ʒ] respectively. The sequences /hj/ and /hw/ tend to be pronounced [ʍ] and [ç] respectively.

Vowels

	front	central	back
close	i		u
open mid	e		o
low		a

The true values of the vowels /a e i o u/ tend to be closer to [ä ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ] although, for simplicity's sake, they are usually transcribed with <a e i o u> even in narrow phonetic transcription. Each vowel has a fairly wide allophonic range and the cardinal [a e i o u] values fall within these ranges.

The high vowels /i u/ have non-syllabic allophones, [i̯~j] and [u̯~w] respectively. These appear when these vowels are unstressed and following another vowel.

Phonotactics

Phonemically, only open syllables are allowed in Lo Ngehu, with the maximum structure being CCV whereby the second consonant must be a semivowel. Phonetically, the nasal segment of a prenasalised stop may close the preceding syllable. In addition, the non-syllabic allophones of the vowels /i u/ may also occur in the coda of a syllable, creating phonetic syllables such as [dwejm] in dwe i mbwe "They are dangerous." The sequences /ji/ and /wu/ do not occur except in the sequences /dji zji ⁿdji/ where the palatalisation of the preceding consonant enables the /j/ to be distinguished.