Tami distinguishes five vowels (i, e, a, o, u) and the following consonants (Colich 1995). Voiced obstruents do not occur in syllable-final position, while glottal stop only occurs at the end of a syllable.
Traditional Tami counting practices begin with the fingers of the hands, then continue on the feet to reach twenty, which translates as 'whole person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'whole person'. Nowadays, most counting above five is done in Tok Pisin. An alternate form of the numeral 'one', dan, functions as an indefinite article. Distributive numerals are formed via reduplication: lualu 'two by two', tolatol 'three by three' and so forth (Bamler 1900:204).
Bamler, G. (1900). Bemerkungen zur Grammatik der Tamisprache. Vokabular der Tamisprache.Zeitschrift für afrikanische und ozeanische Sprachen 5: 198–253.
Colich, Kim (1995). Tami organized phonology data. Ukarumpa: SIL.
External links
Paradisec has two collections of Arthur Cappell's materials (AC1, AC2) and one collection of Malcolm Ross's (MR1) that include Sobei language materials.
Footnotes
^Tami at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
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