Talk:Hehe language

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/ʃ/

Johnson (2015) includes /ʃ/ in her list of Kihehe phonemes. However, she gives no examples of this phoneme anywhere in her paper. She is clearly not a native speaker of the language and appears to have collected only a limited amount of examples. Her table of consonant phonemes is incomplete, omitting t͡ʃ, ʄ, ⁿdʑ, and w (although she mentions t͡ʃ, dʒ and w in the text). She seems unaware that the voiced stops are implosive or that the language has tones. She hears Nyamahanga's ʋ (e.g. in the class 2 prefix) as [v], but also mentions a possible distinction between [w] and [ʍ], for which she gives no examples. At any rate it would seem much safer to rely on Nyamahanga's 198-page work, devoted entirely to phonology, than Johnson's 25 pages, of which only two pages are about phonology. Nyamahanga specifically rejects /ʃ/ as a phoneme, so I think he should be followed. For this reason I have deleted /ʃ/. Kanjuzi (talk) 20:38, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Status of /w/

Johnson (2015) writes: "Kihehe has both [w] and [ʍ], although it is unclear whether they are allophones or actual phonemes. The mother consultant used [ʍ] more frequently than her daughter." – However, it is not clear what she means by [ʍ]. The fricative xʷ sound described in the article on [ʍ] (Voiceless labial–velar fricative) does not appear to be accurate for Kihehe and is in no way mentioned by Nyamahanga in his much longer dissertation. It appears from Nyamahanga that /w/ is simply the sound [w]. When nasalised it becomes [mb-] not [ng-], for example ku-wiila "to increase", mbwiila "I'll increase"; so it is more of a labial sound than a velar one. For this reason it seems best to put it in the labial column on the table rather than the velar column. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:29, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure about the first part of the info, but I can tell you that I do not recommend switching it in the labial column. If you are going to prove that it may sound nasalized and is heard as as [mb-], then write that in the notes below. Otherwise, most charts are easier to read when shortened and /w/ can also be placed in the velar column. Fdom5997 (talk) 18:10, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is in terminology, it seems. Nyamahanga refers to combinations such as bw, kw, etc. as "velarisation", but the article Velarization describes a completely different phenomenon. Perhaps it should be called Labialization or "labio-velarization". As it is, the table is not quite accurate since the first column contains both labial and labio-dental consonants. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:58, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]