There is also a flapped nasalised l (or flapped n), written ɽ̃ here. It is written r＋nasalised vowel (i.e. r＋vowel＋n in existing orthography).
r is trilled between vowels; fricative at the beginning of a word.
rh is a voiceless fricative or voiceless trilled r.
n is post-alveolar.
ny palatal, ỹ seems to occur as a variant.
nw a velar nasal with lip-rounding, w̃ seems to occur as a variant; the velar nasal ŋ is found in onomatopoeic words only.
ny has been written y＋vowel＋n, and nw, w＋vowel＋n, following Yoruba tradition. More recently, ny and nw have been adopted, but without omission of the final n.
x and ɣ are respectively the voiceless and the voiced velar fricatives. In publications they have been written kh and gh.
kp and gb are labio-velars, i.e. sounds requiring a double closure―that of the lips and of the back of the tongue against the soft palate, with a simultaneous release of these stops. Dr I. C. Ward, who examined the pronunciation of a Bini (J. E. Edegbe), and the author were of the opinion that these sounds gave no impression of being implosive, but had no experimental means of verifying this point.
w is a semi-vowel.
y is a voiced palatal fricative.
(Palatal and velar semi-vowels are often used in diphthongs and triphthongs, see above.)
h needs no comment.
LENGTH, STRESS AND TONES
Length is very rarely indicated in this dictionary; it is marked only in the case of vowels, where it is shown by doubling the vowel symbol. There are many pairs of verbs differentiated by a combination of vowel-length and intonation, one type having a shorter vowel and a high tone in the imperfect form, the other, a longer vowel and a rising tone, e.g. ma [ ˥ ] “to fit”, ma [ / ] “to be good”. In these cases the difference in length has not been indicated wherever the distinction is made clear by the tone marks. In an orthography for Bini speakers in which tone-marks are not used, it may be advisable to mark the difference in length instead.
Stress has not been indicated (but v. below).
TONES AND TONE MARKING
The following tones are found in Bini: high, low, mid, rising and falling, rising-falling and falling-rising. The system adopted here for marking the intonation of Bini words and sentences, which has been used by Dr I. C. Ward in her study of intonation, makes use of five
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