The Paicî language is the most widely spoken of the two dozen languages on the main island of New Caledonia

New Caledonia

New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

. It is spoken in a band across the center of the island.

Phonology

Paicî has a rather simple inventory of consonants, compared to other languages of New Caledonia, but it has an unusually large number of nasal vowels. (Gordon 1996)

Paicî syllables are restricted to C

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

V

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

. (Gordon 1996)

Consonants

		Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...		Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
		plain	labial
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		m	mʷ	n̠	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	pʷ	t̠	c	k
	prenasalized	ᵐb	ᵐbʷ	ⁿ̠d̠	ᶮɟ	ᵑɡ
Tap				ɾ̠
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...				l̠	j	w

The palatal stops could be considered affricates since they occur with a heavily fricated release. The lateral and tap do not occur word initially except in a few loan words, and the prefix /ɾɜ/ they. (Gordon 1996)

Because nasal stops are always followed by nasal vowels, while prenasalized stops are always followed by oral vowels, it might be argued that nasal and prenasalized stops are allophonic

Allophone

In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...

. This would reduce the Paicî consonant inventory to 13.

Tones

Paicî has three tones: high, mid, low. Additionally, there are vowels with no inherent tone. (That is, their tone is determined by their environment.) Words commonly have the same tone on all vowels, so tone may belong to the word rather than the syllable.

Vowels

Paicî has a symmetrical system of 10 oral vowels, all found both long and short without significant difference in quality, and seven nasal vowels, some of which may also be long and short. Because sequences of two short vowels may carry two tones, but long vowels are restricted to carrying a single tone, these do appear to be phonemically long vowels rather than sequences. (Gordon 1996)

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...		Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...		Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
	Oral	Nasal	Oral	Nasal	Oral	Nasal
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	/i/	/ĩ/	/ɨ/	/ɨ̃/	/u/	/ũ/
Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...	/e/	/ɛ̞̃/	/ɘ/	/ɜ̞̃/	/o/	/ɔ̞̃/
Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...	/ɛ/		/ɜ/		/ɔ/
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...			/a/	/ɐ̃/

External links

• Ethnologue on Paicî
• Rosetta Project on Paicî
• Information on Paicî, with a list of references and a recorded text (website of LACITO
  LACITO
  LACITO is a primarily Francophone multidisciplinary research organisation, created in 1976...
  
  -CNRS)