The Chukchi language is a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language spoken by around 5,000 people"Language Proficiency of the Population of the Russian Federation" 2010. in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It contains five to six distinct vowels with vowel harmony, and fifteen consonants.
Its phonology is similar to those of other indigenous languages of the Russian Far East—namely Koryak.
Vowels Generally, Chukchi is noted to have 5 or 6 distinct vowels, with and being identical in pronunciation but behaving differently in the language's vowel harmony. A similar occurrence exists in Yup'ik Eskimo. Chukchi phonotactics are (C)V(C).
Word-finally, and are reduced to , while other vowels may be elided.
+Vowel PhonemesFrontCentralBackCloseiMidOpen
Vowel harmony Chukchi is notable for its vowel harmony based on vowel height, with belonging to the recessive group and belonging to the dominant group. The three-vowel pairs alternate with each other and cannot co-occur within a word.
Consonants Chukchi has 15 consonants. The language lacks voiced stops, which are only found in loanwords. +Chukchi consonant phonemesBilabialAlveolarRetroflexPalatalVelarUvularGlottalNasalStopFricativeLateralApproximant
are devoiced to after voiceless stops. is mostly heard as an alveolar trill between vowels.Skorik (1961) is phonetically in free variation. becomes before . have different distributions between the male and female dialects.Dunn (1999) is affricated to word-finally. is voiced to between vowels. are unreleased word-finally. may be affricated to in some environments.
There is also a supersegmental glottalisation realised as a glottal stop preceding a vowel. It is not treated as a consonant as a result of phonotactics and reduplication patterns.
References