Sound inventory and phonological rules
| Manner | Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pb | td | · | · | k | · | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | · | · | · | · | ||||||
| Tap/Flap | · | ɾ | · | · | · | · | ||||||
| Fricative | · | s | ʃ | · | · | h | ||||||
| Approximant | · | · | · | j | w | · | ||||||
| Lateral approximant | · | l | · | · | · | · | ||||||
| Height | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | · | u |
| Close-mid | · | · | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | · | · |
| Open | a | · | · |
CV, V, and CVC are possible; any consonant can occur syllable-initially, but the only ones allowed in the coda are /s/, /ʃ/, and /l//d/ -> [ɾ] / V_V ... in Taino writing, 'd' only occurs word-initially, while 'r' is used between vowels. Stress is usually on the penultimate syllable of a word, but becomes final if the word ends in /i/, the diphthong /ei/, or a nasal vowel. In addition to the monophthongs, Ahiyaniwa also has the diphthongs /ei/, /ai/, /au/, and /ui/.
Distribution of phonemes across 622 transcribed dictionary entries (3,290 total tokens)