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| | the ceremonial language Damin |
 | | Damin has a system of only three vowels, a, i, and u, with contrastive length, whereas everyday Lardil distinguishes long and short varieties of four vowels, a, i, u and e. |
 | | The phonetician J. Catford has pointed out that Damin employs five phonetic initiation types - pulmonic egressive (which characterises ALL sounds in most other Australian languages), pulmonic ingressive (/L/), velaric ingressive (the clicks), velaric egressive (/p'/) and glottalic egressive (/k'/). |
 | | No other language in the world has this variety of initiation types, leading Catford to 'perhaps hypothesize that [Damin's] sound system is a deliberately invented one.' (Interestingly, the Lardil attribute Damin to a legendary personality called Kalthad 'yellow trevally.') |
| www.rickharrison.com /language/damin.html (1085 words) |
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