Tukang Besi language

Tukang Besi, or known in Indonesia by the terms Pulo or Wakatobi, is an Austronesian language spoken in the Tukangbesi Islands in southeast Sulawesi in Indonesia by a quarter million speakers. A Tukang Besi pidgin is used in the area.

Phonology

The northern dialect of Tukang Besi has 25 consonant phonemes and a basic 5-vowel system. It features stress which is usually on the second-to-last syllable. The language has two implosive consonants, which are uncommon in the world's languages. The coronal plosives and /s/ have prenasalized counterparts which act as separate phonemes.

Notes:

/b/ only appears in loanwords, but it contrasts with /ɓ/
[d] and [z] are not phonemic and appear only as allophones of /dʒ/, which appears only in loanwords.

Orthography

Vowels

a – [a/ɐ]
e – [ɛ/e]
i – [i/ɪ]
o – [o/ɔ]
u – [ɯ/u]

Consonants

b – [ɓ/ʔɓ/ʔb/β]
b̠ – [b]
c – [t͡ʃ]
d – [ɗ̪]
d̠ – [d/d͡ʒ/z]
g – [g/ɠ/ʔɠ/ɣ]
h – [h/ɸ]
j – [d͡ʒ]
k – [k/c]
l – [l̪]
m – [m]
mb – [mb]
mp – [mp]
n – [n]
nd – [n̪d̪]
ns – [n̪s̪]
nt – [n̪t̪]
ng – [ŋ]
ngg – [ŋɡ]
ngk – [ŋk]
nj – [n̪d̪]
p – [p]
r – [r]
s – [s]
t – [t̪]
w – [w]
' – [ʔ]

Grammar

Nouns

Tukang Besi does not have grammatical gender or number. It is an ergative–absolutive language.

Verbs

Tukang Besi has an inflectional future tense, which is indicated with a prefix, but no past tense.

Word order

Tukang Besi uses verb–object–subject word order, which is also used by Fijian. Like many Austronesian languages, it has prepositions, but places adjectives, genitives, and determiners after nouns. Yes–no questions are indicated by a particle at the end of the sentence.