Ukue (Epinmi) is an

Edoid language The Edoid languages are a few dozen languages spoken in southern Nigeria. Edoid-speaking ethnic groups are predominantly located in the States of Edo and Delta however, smaller Edoid-speaking communities are also present in the states of Ondo, ...

Ondo State Ondo () is a States of Nigeria, state in Points of the compass, southwestern Nigeria. It was created on 3 February 1976 from the former Western State (Nigeria), Western State. Ondo borders Ekiti State to the north, Kogi State to the northeast fo ...

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

. It is sometimes considered the same language as Ehuẹun.

Phonology

Ukue has a rather reduced system, compared to proto-Edoid, of seven vowels; these form two harmonic sets, and . The language arguably has no phonemic nasal stops; alternate with , depending on whether the following vowel is oral or nasal. Unusually, it has fricatives but no

sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English w ...

s. The inventory is:Jeff Mielke, 2008. ''The emergence of distinctive features'', p 136''ff'';
also found in ''Variation and gradience in phonetics and phonology'', p 26''ff'' (*See

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

for a likely interpretation of the two rhotics.)

References

Edoid languages {{VoltaNiger-lang-stub