The Karkar inventory is as follows. Stress assignment is complex, but not phonemic within morphemes. Syllable structure is CVC, assuming nasal–plosive sequences are analyzed as prenasalized consonants.
Vowels Karkar has a vowel inventory consisting of 11 vowels, which is considered very high for a Papuan language. There is also one
diphthong,
ao . Vowels are written
á ,
é ,
ae ,
o ,
ou ,
ɨ . Foley (2018) lists the 11 Karkar-Yuri vowels as: Some vowel height contrasts in Karkar-Yuri (Foley 2018): •
ki ‘yam’ •
kɨ ‘loosen’ •
ku ‘cut crosswise in half’ •
ke ‘edible nut’ •
kər ‘put in netbag’ •
ko ‘pig’ •
kæ ‘egg’ •
kʌʔr ‘swamp’ •
kɔ ‘again’ •
kar ‘speech’ •
kɒ ‘bird species’ There are four contrasting central vowel heights: •
kɨr ‘
red bird of paradise’ (
Paradisaea rubra) •
kər ‘put in net bag’ •
kʌʔr ‘swamp’ •
kar ‘speech’
Consonants The rhotics and glottal(ized) consonants do not appear initially in a word, and plain , the approximants, and the labialized consonants do not occur finally. Glottal stop only occurs finally. Final
k spirantizes to . Plosives are voiced intervocalically. Intervocalic
f and
p neutralize to (apart from a few names, where is retained), and intervocalic
k is voiced to . Phonemic labialized stops only occur in two words,
apwar 'weeds, to weed' and
ankwap 'another'. Otherwise consonants are labialized between a rounded and a front vowel, as in
pok-ea 'going up'. In some words, the plosive of a final NC is silent unless suffixed:
onomp 'my',
onompono 'it's mine'. Prenasalized and labialized consonant contrasts: •
pi ‘bird tail’,
pwi ‘enough’,
mporan ‘tomorrow’ •
kar ‘voice’,
ŋkɔte ‘over there’,
kwar ‘ground’,
ŋkwakwo ‘many kinds’ Plain and preglottalized sonorants contrasts, which only occur in word finals: •
ərər ‘sore’,
ərəʔr ‘dig a hole’ •
pan ‘sago flour’,
pəʔn ‘blunt’ == Writing system ==