Tübatulabal is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, traditionally spoken in Kern County, California, United States. It is the traditional language of the Tübatulabal, who have now shifted to English. The language originally had three main dialects: Bakalanchi, Pakanapul and Palegawan. In English, the name Tübatulabal refers to both the Tübatulabal people and their language. However, in the language itself, the term Tübatulabal refers only to the Tübatulabal people. Its origin is unclear, but it may be related to the noun stem "pine nuts". The Tübatulabal term for the Tübatulabal language is . Phonology Segmental phonology Vowels There are six phonemic vowels in Tübatulabal: Contrastive short and long versions of each vowel are found in both stressed and unstressed syllables. The vowels have various allophones which occur in different environments, most notably more central lax allophones when the vowels are short and occur in unstressed syllables. i and u can occur as the second member of a diphthong with any other vowel, resulting in ten possible diphthongs (Voegelin reports that ɨu is rare). Phonologically, the members of a diphthong are treated as distinct segments. For example, the common initial reduplication process, which copies the first stem vowel, copies only the first member of a diphthong, e.g.: 'the sucker fish' 'the many suckers in one place' Vowel length is contrastive. However, according to , in the suffixing morphology length is typically predictable. In most cases, the first suffix is short, the second suffix is long, the third suffix is short, and so on. For example, the verbal stem 'to eat' can be expanded to 'let us go and pretend to eat'. In this word, each suffix alternates in length compared to its neighbors. When arranged differently, the same suffixes will have different lengths. Thus compare 'let us' with the realization of the same morpheme in 'let us go eat'. Tübatulabal consonants show a basic voicing distinction, with a corresponding alternately voiced phoneme present for almost every obstruent. Tübatulabal voiceless consonants are unaspirated, like those in English after an initial /s/, e.g. as in 'spin', 'stiff', 'skin'. Non-contrastive allophones of all vowels occur, usually when a vowel follows a nasal consonant, and especially when it also precedes a glottal consonant. Consonants All consonants except the glottal stop can occur as geminates. Gemination is often phonologically predictable. In particular, all consonants except the voiced stops and the glottal stop geminate when following a short vowel.