The following discussion covers the central dialect of Amis.
Consonants • The voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ only occurs in some loanwords, such as 'ridge between sections of a rice field'. The epiglottal consonants have proven difficult to describe, with some sources describing them as pharyngeal or even uvular as opposed to epiglottal. It is unclear if is a separate phoneme from or if it's just an allophone of it. The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a word-final allophone of . The voiceless plosives and the affricate are
released in clusters, so that
cecay "one" is pronounced ; as is :
sepat "four" is . The glottal stop is an exception, frequently having no audible release in final position. The
voiced fricatives, (the latter found only in loanwords) are devoiced to in utterance-final and sometimes initial position. may be
interdental or post-dental. The sibilants, , are optionally palatalized () before . does not occur in word-initial position. is often post-alveolar, and in final position it is released: "fog". shows dramatic dialectal variation. In
Fengbin, a town in the center of Amis territory, it is pronounced as a
median dental fricative, , whereas in the town of Kangko, only away, it is a
lateral . In Northern Amis, it is a plosive , which may be laxed to intervocalically. The epiglottals are also reported to have different pronunciations in the north, but the descriptions are contradictory. In Central Amis, is always voiceless and is often accompanied by vibrations that suggest it involves an epiglottal trill . Edmondson and Elsing report that these are true epiglottals initially and medially, but in utterance-final position they are
epiglotto–pharyngeal. Sakizaya, considered to be a separate language, contrasts a voiced with voiceless . In the practical orthography, is written , , , , , , and .
Vowels Amis has three common vowels, . Despite the fact that a great deal of latitude is afforded by only needing to distinguish three vowels, Amis vowels stay close to their cardinal values, though there is more movement of and toward each other (tending to the range) than there is in front-vowel space (in the range). A voiceless epenthetic schwa optionally breaks up consonant clusters, as noted above. However, there are a small number of words where a short schwa (written
e) may be phonemic. However, no contrast involving the schwa is known, and if it is also epenthetic, then Amis has words with no phonemic vowels at all. Examples of this
e are
malmes "sad", pronounced , and
’nem "six", pronounced or .
Stress Stress regularly falls on the final syllable. == Grammar ==