Oku (Ebkuo, Ekpwo, Ukfwo, Bvukoo, Kuɔ) is a Grassfields Bantoid language that is primarily spoken by the Oku people of northwest Cameroon, a fondom of the Tikar people. They are a different ethnic group from the Oku people of Sierra Leone.
Phonology
Consonants
Oku has 21 consonant phonemes. The consonant phoneme inventory of the language is shown below.
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Plain Labialized Stop/Affricate voiceless voiced Fricative voiceless voiced Nasal //N// Lateral Glide
Davis argues that Oku has five nasal phonemes. These are three non-syllabic nasals (, , and ), syllabic , and archiphonemic //N//. does not assimilate to the following consonant. However //N// assimilates before all consonants except , , and , where it becomes .
Vowels
Davis describes the following vowels in her thesis.
Front Back Unrounded Rounded High Tense Lax Mid Tense Lax Low
Orthography
The Oku alphabet has 25 letters.
a b ch d dz e ɛ ə f g gh i j k l m n ŋ o p s t w y z
References
Further reading