'r' and where 'l', e.g. (Dictionary) or (Bible) 'food'. (In fact [l] and [r] are allophones of the same phoneme.) There is also hesitation between the spellings 'sk' and 'sy' (both and ('bamboo') are found in the Citumbuka dictionary). Phonology Vowels The same vowels , , , , and syllabic are found in Tumbuka as in the neighbouring language Chewa. Consonants Tumbuka consonants are also similar to those of the neighbouring Chewa, but with certain differences. The continuant sounds , and , which are absent or marginal in Chewa, are common in Tumbuka. Also common are the palatalised sounds , , , , , , and . In Tumbuka there are no affricates such as Chichewa , , , . The sounds and are never nasalised in Tumbuka, so that Chewa ('fish') = Tumbuka . The sound is found only in foreign words such as ('shirt') and ('sugar'). Tumbuka sometimes corresponds to Chewa , for example Chewa 'to be ill' = Tumbuka , Chewa 'to eat' = Tumbuka . The pronunciation of "sk" and "zg" varies according to dialect. Tumbuka consonants are frequently either palatalised (i.e. followed by /y/) or rounded (i.e. followed by /w/.) Some of them can also be preceded by a homorganic nasal (/n/, /ng'/ or /m/). The possible consonant combinations are shown in the table below: Tone One of the main differences between Chewa and Tumbuka is that Chewa is a tonal language, whereas in Tumbuka there are no distinctions of tone between one word and another. Tumbuka has a tonal accent but in a very limited way, in that every word, spoken in isolation, has the same falling tone on the penultimate syllable (which also coincides with stress). It is therefore not possible in Tumbuka to contrast two different words or two different tenses tonally, as it is in Chichewa and other Bantu languages. However, this penultimate falling tone occurs not on every word, but only on the last word of a phonological phrase; e.g. in the following sentence, only the second word has a tone, the first being toneless: 'we are cooking porridge' A greater variety of tonal patterns is found in the ideophones (expressive words) of Tumbuka; for example Low ( 'disintegrating into small pieces'), High ( 'swooping low (of birds)'), High-Low ( 'sound of thing bursting'), and Low-High ( 'sudden disappearance'), etc. Intonational tones are also used in Tumbuka; for example, in