Avatime, also known as Afatime, Sideme, or Sia, is a Kwa language of the Avatime people of eastern Ghana. The Avatime live primarily in the seven towns and villages of Amedzofe, Vane, Gbadzeme, Dzokpe, Biakpe, Dzogbefeme, and Fume.
Avatime has nine vowels,, though the vowels have been overlooked in most descriptions of the language. It is not clear if the difference between and is one of advanced and retracted tongue root, as in so many languages of Ghana, or of vowel height: different phonetic parameters support different analyses. Avatime has vowel harmony. A root many not mix vowels of the relaxed and contracted sets, and prefixes change vowels to harmonize with the vowels of the root. For example, the human singular genderprefix is, and the human plural is : "thief", "father"; "thieves", "fathers"; also "bee" but "god". Vowels may be long or short. Records from 1910 showed that all vowels could be nasalized, but that is disappearing, and few words with nasal vowels remained by the end of the century.
Consonants
is found in Ewe borrowings, as is, which can be seen to be distinct from in the loanword "boat". The language has been claimed to have doubly articulated fricatives. However, as with similar claims for Swedish, the labial articulation is not fricated, and these are actually labialized velars,. All velar fricatives are quite weak, and are closer to. The affricates vary between and, which may be a generational difference.
Phonotactics
Syllables are V, CV, CGV, and N: Avatime allows consonant-approximant clusters, where the approximant may be. There is also a syllabic nasal, which takes its own tone: "many". Any consonant but may form a cluster with : "table", "snake", "chameleon", "mucous". After a coronal consonant, the is pronounced. When two vowels come together, they are either separated by a glottal stop, fuse into a single vowel, or the first vowel reduces to a semivowel. In the latter case, the four front vowels reduce to and three of the back vowels reduce to, but is fronted to. However, there are /Cw/ and /Cj/ sequences which are not derived from vowel sequences. These are.
