Golin language

"Golin" redirects here. For other uses, see Golin (disambiguation).

Golin
Region	Gumine District, Simbu Province
Native speakers	unknown (51,000 cited 1981)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Chimbu–Wahgi Chimbu Golin
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gvf
Glottolog	goli1247

Golin (also Gollum, Gumine) is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	ɪ ɪː	ʊ ʊː
Mid	ɛ ɛː	ɔ ɔː
Low		ɑ ɑː

Diphthongs that occur are /ɑi ɑu ɔi ui/. The consonants /l n/ can also be syllabic.

Consonant

		Bilabial		Alveolar		Palatal	Velar
		plain	lab.	plain	Late.		plain	lab.
Nasal		m		n
Stop	voiceless /voiced	p b	(bʷ)	t d			k ɡ	(gʷ)
Fricative				s~ʃ	ɬ~ l
Approximant						j		w
Trill				r

/bʷ ɡʷ/ are treated as single consonants by Bunn & Bunn (1970), but as combinations of /b/ + /w/, /ɡ/ + /w/ by Evans et al. (2005).

Two consonants appear to allow free variation in their realisations: [s] varies with [ʃ], and [l] with [ɬ].

/n/ assimilates to [ŋ] before /k/ and /ɡ/.

Tone

Golin is a tonal language, distinguishing high, mid, and low tone.