Iwam language

May River Iwam
Region	East Sepik Province
Native speakers	3,000 (1998)[1]
Language family	Sepik Upper Sepik Iwam May River Iwam
Language codes
ISO 639-3	iwm
Glottolog	iwam1256[2]

May River Iwam, or just Iwam (cf. Sepik Iwam), is a language of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Vowels^[3]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a

In non-final positions, /u/ /o/, /i/, and /e/ are [ʊ] [ɔ], [ɪ], and [ɛ], respectively. /ə/ appears only in nonfinal syllables. When adjacent to nasal consonants, vowels are nasalized; nasalization may also occur when adjacent to word boundaries.^[3]

Consonants^[3]

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Stop	p	t		k
Fricative		s			h
Flap		r
Approximant			j	w

/p/ and /k/ are voiced fricatives ([β] and [ɣ]) respectively) when intervocalic and unreleased when final (/t/ is also unreleased when final). /ŋ/ is a nasal flap ([ɾ̃]) word-initially and between vowels. /s/ is [ts] initially and may otherwise be palatalized [sʲ].^[3] Sequences of any consonant and /w/ are neutralized before /u/ where an offglide is always heard.

Phonotactics

Bilabial and velar consonants and /n/ may be followed by /w/ when initial. Other initial clusters include /pr/, /kr/, /hr/, /hw/, and /hn/ and final clusters are /w/ or /j/ followed by any consonant except for /h/ or /ŋ/.^[3]

Notes

1. May River Iwam at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Iwam". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Laycock (1965:115)

References

• Laycock, D.C. (1965). "Three Upper Sepik phonologies". Oceanic Linguistics (University of Hawai'i Press) 4 (1/2): 113–118. doi:10.2307/3622917. JSTOR 3622917.