Pinyin language

Pinyin is a Grassfields language spoken by some 27,000 people in the Northwest Region of Cameroon.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants

Phoneme	Allophones	Environment	Orthography
p	p		Template:Angle bracket
	pʰ	Before /u/ in an open syllable.
	b	After /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
	β	Between vowels within a root.
t	t		Template:Angle bracket
k	k	Beginning of words and of roots within words, and after /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
	ʔ	Only C found at ends of words.	Template:Angle bracket
kʷ	kʷ		Template:Angle bracket
l	l	In roots.	Template:Angle bracket
	ɾ	In suffixes.	Template:Angle bracket
	d	After /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
ɣ	ɣ		Template:Angle bracket
	ɡ	After /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
ɣʷ	ɡʷ	After /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
f	f		Template:Angle bracket
s	s	/ts/ after /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
ts	ts		Template:Angle bracket
z	z		Template:Angle bracket
	dz	After /ɴ̩/.
ʃ	ʃ	/tʃ/ after /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
tʃ	tʃ		Template:Angle bracket
ʒ	ʒ		Template:Angle bracket
	dʒ	After /ɴ̩/.	Template:Angle bracket
m	m		Template:Angle bracket
n	n		Template:Angle bracket
ɲ	ɲ		Template:Angle bracket
ŋ	ŋ		Template:Angle bracket
N̩	m̩ n̩ ŋ̍	Homorganic with following C. Carries tone.	Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket
w	w		Template:Angle bracket
ɥ	ɥ		Template:Angle bracket
j	j		Template:Angle bracket

Sequences are:

py (mby), ly (ndy), ty, ky, ngy, my, kẅ, ngẅ (= )

pw (mbw), lw (ndw), tw, tsw, chw, shw, sw, zw, zhw, nw, nyw, ŋw

All noun and verb roots begin with a consonant; initial vowels are necessarily prefixes. Only occur in prefixes or at the beginning of words, and only occurs in suffixes. do not occur at the ends of words.

Vowels

Vowels

Phoneme	Orthography
i
y
ɛ
a
ɔ
u
ə
ɨ

All known long vowels may occur medially or at ends of words, none at the beginning, though long are not attested. Long vowels are written double: . Diphthongs take a single tone.

Tones are high, mid, low, rising, falling. They are written as in IPA, apart from low, which is not written: . Falling tone is largely confined to suffixes, and rising tone is rare, found only on a few nouns such as 'father'.

References

• The Pinyin Orthography Guide (Njeck Mathaus Mbah & Stephen C. Anderson, 2005)