EURPhon: Ersu

Phylum: Sino-Tibetan

Genus: Qiangic

Lat/lon: 28.866137, 102.625889

ISO code: ers

Consonants

Basic short series

	bilabial	labio-velar	labio-dental	dental	alveolar	retroflex	alveolo-palatal	palatal	velar
stop	p, pʰ, b				t, tʰ, d				k, kʰ, g
tap						ɽ
fricative			f, v	s̪, z̪	s͇, z͇		ɕ, ʑ		x
affricate				t̪s̪, t̪s̪ʰ, d̪z̪	t͇s͇, t͇s͇ʰ, d͇z͇	ʈɽ, ʈɽʰ, ɖɽ	tɕ, tɕʰ, dʑ
lateral fricative					ɬ
nasal	m				n				ŋ
approximant		w						j
lateral approximant					l

Short pre-nasalised series

	bilabial	dental	alveolar	retroflex	alveolo-palatal	velar
stop	ⁿpʰ, ⁿb		ⁿtʰ, ⁿd			ⁿkʰ, ⁿg
affricate		ⁿt̪s̪ʰ, ⁿd̪z̪	ⁿt͇s͇ʰ, ⁿd͇z͇	ⁿʈɽʰ, ⁿɖɽ	ⁿtɕʰ, ⁿdʑ

Vowels

Basic short series

	front	central	back
close	i
close-mid			o
mid		ə˞
open-mid	ɛ
open		a, a˞

Apical vowels

/ɿ/, /ɿ̹/

Tones

55, 11

Licit initial clusters

Cw/j

Licit finals

Licit syllabic templates

(ə)(C)(C)V

Source: Chirkova, Katia; Dehe Wang; Yiya Chen; Angélique Amelot; and Tanja Kocjančič Antolík. 2015. Ersu. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45.187–211.

Comments: Clusters with initial nasals were analysed as phonemes. The language seems to have sesquisyllables (called ‘clusters with a schwa-like segment’ in the paper). The fricative vowels are transcribed as /z̩/ and /v̩/ in the paper — the former was transcribed following the convention for Mandarin Chinese and other languages of the region, while the latter was treated as the rounded version of the former since ‘The two are differentiated by the configuration of the lips: spread for /z̩/ and rounded for /v̩/’.