EURPhon: Lhomi Tibetan

Phylum: Sino-Tibetan

Genus: Tibetic

Lat/lon: 27.749097, 87.376366

ISO code: lhm

Consonants

Basic short series

	bilabial	labio-velar	alveolar	retroflex	alveolo-palatal	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p, pʰ		t, tʰ	ʈ, ʈʰ			k, kʰ
trill			r
fricative			s		ɕ			h
affricate			ts, tsʰ		tɕ, tɕʰ
nasal	m		n				ŋ
approximant		w				j
lateral approximant			l, l̥

Vowels

Basic short series

	front	central	back
close	i, y		u
close-mid	e, ø		o
open		a

Long series

	front	central	back
close	iː		uː
close-mid			oː
open		aː

Short breathy voiced series

	front	central	back
close	i̤, y̤		ṳ
close-mid	e̤, ø̤		o̤
open		a̤

Long breathy voiced series

	front	central	back
close	i̤ː		ṳː
close-mid			o̤ː
open		a̤ː

Licit initial clusters

Licit finals

p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l, r

Licit syllabic templates

(C)V(C)

Source: Vesalainen, Olavi. 2016. A Grammar Sketch of Lhomi. (SIL Language and Culture Documentation and Description, 34) Dallas: SIL International.

Comments: Breathy voice is a sign of low register, which is can also be realised as low pitch: “My observation is that the pitch is not very well audible with most male speakers. It is the clear and creaky vowels that help the hearer to distinguish between high and low register words. Some women speakers seem to change the pitch also. I argue that it is the vowel quality (tense/lax) that is contrastive, not the pitch. High register (tense) words are also more stressed than the low register ones (word stress). These observations need to be either confirmed or refuted by a detailed study” (p. 6). NB: the author seems to use the terms ‘breathy’ and ‘creaky’ interchangeably.