Tukang Besi language

The northern dialect of Tukang Besi has 25 consonant phonemes and a basic 5-vowel system. It features stress which is usually on the second-to-last syllable. The language has two implosive consonants, which are uncommon in the world's languages. The plosives, except , and have prenasalized counterparts which act as separate phonemes. Notes: • only appears in loanwords, but it contrasts with • and are not phonemic and appear only as allophones of , which appears only in loanwords. ==Orthography==

Vowels • a – • e – • i – • o – • u – Consonants • b – • b̠ – • c – • d – • d̠ – • g – • h – • j – • k – • l – • m – • mb – • mp – • n – • nd – • ns – • nt – • ng – • ngg – • ngk – • nj – • p – • r – • s – • t – • w – • ' – ==Grammar==

Nouns Tukang Besi does not have grammatical gender or number. It is an ergative–absolutive language. Verbs Tukang Besi has an inflectional future tense, which is indicated with a prefix, but no past tense. Word order Tukang Besi uses verb–object–subject word order, which is also used by Fijian. Like many Austronesian languages, it has prepositions, but places adjectives, genitives, and determiners after nouns. Yes–no questions are indicated by a particle at the end of the sentence. ==References==