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Pronunciation

The changes in intonation allow words and phrasal words to be multiplied even further.  For example me (pronounced may) can mean "ear" if you lift the tone on the "e", or "breast" if you use a falling tone.  Definitely a recipe for a few laughs.  Tënë, tênë and tene mean "word", "rock" and "for" respectively.  To the untrained ear they all sound the same, and all are used in multiple phrasal words.

The pronunciation is as follows:

a          a in father

e          ay in may

i           ee in flee

o          o in bone

u          oo in choose

For the accents, when you see the circumflex ^, raise your tone, when you see the diaeresis ¨, use an even tone, when you see no accent, drop the tone. 

Gb is pronounced like a "b" but blow through your lips hard to make it forceful. 

For the kp, say forceful p. 

Words with a “n” or “m” in front of another consonant have a little hum before you say the second consonant.  For the "m" hum in your mouth, for the "n" hum in your nose. 

Syllables always end with a vowel, so if you say ngangu (power) as ngan - gu, no one will have any idea what you are saying.  It must be pronounced nga - ngu.