The language spoken by the Lun Bawang

Lun Bawang

The Lun Bawang is an ethnic group found in Central Borneo. They are indigenous to the highlands of East Kalimantan, Brunei , southwest of Sabah and northern region of Sarawak...

s (or Lundayeh) belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian family. The first published material written fully in the Lun Bawang language is a translation of the Bible in 1982, which is called Bala Luk Do. A dialect of the Lun Bawang language, Kemaloh Lundayeh, was recently (2006) compiled into a bilingual dictionary of Lundayeh language and English.

Phonology

There are 6 vowels, 18 consonants and 5 diphthongs in the Lun Bawang language.

caption | Table of consonant phonemes of Lun Bawang

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...		Dental		Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...		Post- Alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...		Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...		Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m /m/				n /n/						ng /ŋ/
Plosive	p /p/	b /b/	t /t̪/	d /d̪/							k /k/	g /ɡ/	/ʔ/
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...							c /tʃ/
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...					s /s/							/ɣ/	h /h/
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...					l /l/		r /r/		y /j/		w /w/

caption | Table of vowel phonemes of Lun Bawang

Height	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/		u /u/
Mid	e /e, ɛ/	e /ə/	o /o, ɔ/
Open		a /a/

caption | Table diphthongs of Lun Bawang

Orthography	IPA
ai	/aɪ̯, ai/
au	/aʊ̯, au/
ia	/ia/
ou	/ow/
ui, oi	/ɔʏ/