Several of the
Native American languages of North America use the
colon () to indicate vowel length.
Zuni is one. Other languages include
Hupa of
California,
Oʼodham of Arizona,
Sayula Popoluca of Mexico and
Mohawk of Ontario. Still others use a
half colon (just the top dot of the colon, or a
middot, , not to be confused with or other dot characters). Both conventions derive from Americanist phonetic notation (below). The letter colon () distinct from and generally smaller than the punctuation colon, is used as a grammatical tone letter in
Budu in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, in
Sabaot in
Kenya, and in some
Grebo in
Liberia. It is also used in several languages of
Papua New Guinea:
Erima,
Gizra,
Go꞉bosi,
Gwahatike,
Kaluli,
Kamula,
Kasua,
Kuni-Boazi and
Zimakani. In Erima, the letter colon is used before a vowel letter
a or
u to indicate nasalization, for example '
"yam", ' "a bee". In Gizra, the letter colon is used in the digraph
u꞉ /ɨ/ distinct from the letter
u /u/. The digraph doesn’t often occur at the end of words, but is still distinct from a word ending with
u followed by the punctuation colon. In Go꞉bosi, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguish
o꞉ /o/ from
o /ɔ/. In Kaluli, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguish
a꞉ /ɛ/ from
a /a/, and
o꞉ /ɔ/ from
o /o/. In Kamula, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguish
a꞉ /ɛ/ from
a /a/. In Kasua, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguish
a꞉ /æ/ from
a /ɑ/. In Kuni-Boazi the letter colon is used after a vowel letter to indicate grammatical vowel lengthening, for example '
"when he talked" and ' "when he talked about it".. ==Phonetic symbol==