In addition to these consonants, the Lango language maintains a gemination [Cː] distinction in the stops, affricates, nasals and lateral.
Voiceless stops and affricates are slightly aspirated, whereas voiced stops and affricates are fully voiced, sometimes with a characteristic of breathy voice. Stops are normally unreleased at the end of an utterance.
Fricatives and the voiceless alveolar tap are found in complementary distribution with ungeminated voiceless stops and affricates:3
A glottal stop [ʔ] can also be heard in word-initial position, or in other intervocalic positions. In slow speech, it may also be heard as a murmured fricative [ɦ].4
Kumam has ten vowels, forming an asymmetric vowel harmony system based on advanced and retracted tongue root, wherein the presence of advanced tongue root vowels [+ATR] may change retracted tongue root vowels [-ATR], but the reverse does not hold. Vowels can be lengthened but in a predictable manner.5
Long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel: ⟨aa, ee, ëë, ii, ïï, oo, öö, uu, üü⟩.
Noonan, Michael (2011). A Grammar of Lango. doi:10.1515/9783110850512. ISBN 9783110850512. 9783110850512 ↩
Uzoigwe, G. N. (1973). The beginnings of Lango society : a review of evidence. OCLC 38562622. http://worldcat.org/oclc/38562622 ↩
Teacher's Guide Lëblaŋo: An atwërö kwan kede cöc (PDF). Uganda Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Sports, National Curriculum Development Centre. 2014. p. 286. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P1_Leblango_Teacher%27s_Guide_Final.pdf ↩