Ehuẹun (Ekpimi) is an
Edoid language
The Edoid languages are a few dozen languages spoken in Southern Nigeria, predominantly in the former Bendel State. The name ''Edoid'' derives from its most widely spoken member, Edo, the language of Benin City, which has 25 million native and se ...
of
Ondo State
Ondo State ( yo, Ìpínlẹ̀ Oǹdó) is a state in southwestern Nigeria. It was created on 3 February 1976 from the former Western State. It borders Ekiti State to the north, Kogi State to the northeast, Edo State to the east, Delta State ...
,
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of G ...
. It is sometimes considered the same language as
Ukue.
Phonology
Ehuẹun has a rather reduced system, compared to proto-Edoid, of seven vowels; these form two harmonic sets, and .
The language arguably has no phonemic nasal stops; alternate with , depending on whether the following vowel is oral or nasal. The inventory is:
The two
rhotics
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including , in the Latin script and , in the Cyrillic script. They a ...
have been described as voiced and voiceless trills. However, Ladefoged
found both to be approximants, with the pair being
raised (without being fricatives) but not trills.
References
Edoid languages
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