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Mongol, also known as Mwakai, is a Keram language of Papua New Guinea. Despite the name, it is not related to Mongolian, which is spoken in East Asia.

It is spoken in Mongol village (4°15′44″S 143°55′03″E / 4.262293°S 143.917638°E / -4.262293; 143.917638 (Mongol)), Keram Rural LLG, East Sepik Province.

Phonology

Mwakai has 12 consonants and six vowels, shown in the tables below. This section follows Barlow (2020).

The sound only occurs in borrowings, with earlier */t/ having historically become /r/; this is belied by the realisation of word-final /r/ as . /s/ patterns as a palatal consonant, with the optional allophone ; there is some interplay between the sounds /s/ and /ⁿd͡ʒ/ in casual speech, with the contrast sometimes being neutralised in favour or either realisation. is a marginal phone which appears in borrowings and occasional as a realisation of /n/ before /i/. /r/ varies between and /p/ is occasionally realised as .

/w/ and /j/ have a limited distribution, appearing mostly word-initially or -finally, and only rarely intervocalically. Some instances of /j/ and most instances of /w/ may be merely epenthetic, suggesting that Mwakai is in the process of losing its glide phonemes.

/i u e/ are rarely realised as their cardinal qualities and may approach especially when unstressed.

References

1. Mongol at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2019). "Papua New Guinea languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (22nd ed.). Dallas: SIL International.
3. United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
4. Barlow, Russel (2020). "Notes on Mwakai, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea". Journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea. 38.

Further reading

• Barlow, Russell (2020). Notes on Mwakai, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 38: 37-99. ISSN 0023-1959

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• Languages of East Sepik Province
• Mongol–Langam languages
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