Okpe is an
Edoid language
The Edoid languages are a few dozen languages spoken in southern Nigeria. Edoid-speaking ethnic groups are predominantly located in the States of Edo and Delta however, smaller Edoid-speaking communities are also present in the states of Ondo, ...
of
Nigeria
Nigeria, 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 Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
spoken by the
Urhobo people
The Urhobos are a people located in southern Nigeria, near the northwestern Niger Delta. They are the major ethnic group in Delta State. The people of this ethnic group speak the Urhobo language. Their population is approximately 7 million.
Th ...
.
Phonology
The sound system is rather conservative, and nearly the same as that of
Urhobo. The vowels system is the same, and somewhat reduced compared to proto-Edoid: there are seven vowels, .
[Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1994. ''Grounded phonology'', p 181''ff''] Of the
consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
, only significant differences are the addition of and of the distinction between ''l'' vs ''n'' and ''y'' vs ''ny'': these alternate, depending on whether the following vowel is oral or nasal. also have nasal
allophones
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...
before nasal vowels.
References
Edoid languages
{{VoltaNiger-lang-stub