| Oku | |
| Nativename: | Kuɔ |
| States: | Cameroon |
| Speakers: | 87,000 |
| Dateprefix: | from the |
| Date: | 2005 census |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Niger-Congo |
| Fam2: | Atlantic–Congo |
| Fam3: | Benue–Congo |
| Fam4: | Southern Bantoid |
| Fam5: | Grassfields |
| Fam6: | Ring |
| Fam7: | Center |
| Iso3: | oku |
| Glotto: | okuu1243 |
| Glottorefname: | Oku |
Oku (Ebkuo, Ekpwo, Ukfwo, Bvukoo, Kuɔ) is a Grassfields Bantoid language that is primarily spoken by the Oku people of northwest Cameroon, a fondom of the Tikar people. They are a different ethnic group from the Oku people of Sierra Leone.
Oku has 21 consonant phonemes.[1] The consonant phoneme inventory of the language is shown below.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Labialized | ||||||||
| Stop/Affricate | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | //N// | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||
| Glide | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
Davis argues that Oku has five nasal phonemes. These are three non-syllabic nasals (pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, and pronounced as /link/), syllabic pronounced as /link/, and archiphonemic //N//.[1] pronounced as /link/ does not assimilate to the following consonant. However //N// assimilates before all consonants except pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, and pronounced as /link/, where it becomes pronounced as /link/. [1]
Davis describes the following vowels in her thesis.[1]
| Front | Back | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | |||||||
| High | Tense | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Lax | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Mid | Tense | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Lax | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Low | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
The Oku alphabet has 25 letters.
| a | b | ch | d | dz | e | ɛ | ə | f | g | gh | i | j | k | l | m | n | ŋ | o | p | s | t | w | y | z |