Tẹẹ (), or Tai, is an Ogoni language and the language of the Tai tribe of the Ogoni people of

Rivers State Rivers is a states of Nigeria, state in the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria (Old Eastern Region). Formed on 27 May 1967, when it was split from the former Eastern Region, Nigeria, Eastern Region, Rivers State borders include Imo State, Im ...

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. It is to a limited degree

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

with Khana, the main Ogoni language, but its speakers consider it to be a separate language.

Phonology

The Tẹẹ sound system is typical of an Ogoni language and identical to that of Khana, with the exception of four or five voiceless

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

s not found in that language. The voiceless is also found in other Ogoni languages, and voiceless and are also found in other

languages of Nigeria There are over 520 native languages spoken in Nigeria. The official language is English, which was the language of Colonial Nigeria. The English-based creole ''Nigerian Pidgin'' – first used by the British and African slavers to facilitate t ...

Vowels

There are seven oral vowels, , spelt (i e ẹ a ọ o u), and five nasal vowels, (spelt this way also). All may occur in long or short forms.

Consonants

A glottal stop appears before any otherwise vowel-initial

stem Stem or STEM most commonly refers to: * Plant stem, a structural axis of a vascular plant * Stem group * Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics Stem or STEM can also refer to: Language and writing * Word stem, part of a word respon ...

. The alveolar consonants are apical. Tẹẹ includes a rather unusual series of voiceless

s. The voiceless palatal sounds rather like the

voiceless palatal fricative The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C. It is the non-sibilant equiv ...

, but is not as noisy (that is, there is not much random-frequency noise in its sound spectrum). Similarly, is a voiceless

approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do prod ...

, not a

voiceless fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

. The voiceless bilabial nasal, , is only known to occur in one word, (an unidentified abdominal organ), and then only for some speakers. All of the voiceless sonorants are actually voiced during the second half of their enunciation. That is, is pronounced However, they are considerably shorter than their voiced homologues, and hence cannot be considered /h C/ sequences with an otherwise unattested consonant .

Tone

Tẹẹ has three tones: , and . * The high tone is indicated by an acute accent : á, ã́, é, ẹ́, ẽ́, í, ĩ́, ó, ọ́, ṍ, ú, ṹ; * The low tone is indicated by a grave accent : à, ã̀, è, ẹ̀, ẽ̀, ì, ĩ̀, ò, ọ̀, õ̀, ù, ũ̀; * The middle tone is indicated with no diacritic.

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * {{Cross River languages Indigenous languages of Rivers State Ogoni languages