Choni (Jonê) and Thewo are dialects of a
Tibetic language
The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptiv ...
spoken in western China in the vicinity of
Jonê County
Jonê County (also ''Cone'', ''Chone'', ''Choni''; ; local pronunciation: /tÉ•É”LnÉ ) is an administrative district in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, China. It is one of 58 counties of Gansu. It is part of the Gannan P ...
.
Choni has four contrastive aspirated fricatives: , , .
Phonology
* is phonetically a fricativized alveolar trill , and may be heard as as an allophone.
* A syllable-initial can be heard as a uvular fricative before voiceless consonants and as a voiced before voiced consonants. A syllable-final can be heard as a uvular stop after or vowel sounds.
* can also be heard as an allophone of between or and another vowel.
* rarely exists as a phoneme, and is only attested in a few words with a palatal or alveolo-palatal initial.
References
External links
A phonological profile of Chone
{{Languages of China
Languages of China
Central Bodish languages