Gimi language

Not to be confused with Gimi language (West New Britain).

Gimi
Labogai
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Eastern Highlands Province
Native speakers	(23,000 cited 2000)
Language family	Proto-Trans–New Guinea Trans–New Guinea Kainantu–Goroka Goroka Gimi
Dialects	Gouno
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gim
Glottolog	gimi1243
ELP

Gimi, also known as Labogai, is a Papuan language spoken in the Eastern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea. 23,000 speakers (2000 cited) speak the Gimi language.

Phonology

Gimi has 5 vowels and 12 consonants. It has voiceless and voiced glottal consonants where related languages have /k/ and /ɡ/. The voiceless glottal is simply a glottal stop [ʔ]. The voiced consonant behaves phonologically like a glottal stop, but does not have full closure. Phonetically it is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant [˷].

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low	ɑ

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	ʔ
	voiced	b	d
Approximant	voiced			˷
Nasal		m	n
Tap/Flap			ɾ
Fricative	voiceless		s	h
	voiced		z

Allophony

/p/ occurs word initially only in loanwords.

/b/ can surface as either [b] or [β] in free variation.

/z/ becomes [s] before /ɑ/.

/t/ and /ɾ/ tend to fluctuate with one another word initially.

Syllables

The syllable structure is (C)V(G), where G is either /ʔ/ or /˷/.

Tone

The final vowel of a word takes either a level or falling tone. The falling tone is written with an acute accent.

ak "seed"		ák "armband"
nimi "bird"		nimí "louse"

Orthography

Gimi uses the Latin script.

Letter	Aa	Bb	Dd	Ee	Gg	Hh	Ii	Kk	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Zz
IPA	ɑ	b	d	e	˷ (ʔ)	h	i	ʔ (ʔː)	m	n	o	p	ɾ	s	t	u	z