vowel position. The last consonant position can be a plosive, a rhotic, or a nasal. Register, pitch and tone High and low are the two registers in the Sikkimese language. Both have many features. The high register produces a cranky or stiff voice when producing vowels. The high register also produces a high pitch. Voiceless and aspirated consonants happen in the high register. In the low register, a low pitch is produced along with a modal or breathy voice when producing vowels. The low register is also used when producing voiced and breathy consonants. Vowels The following are the Sikkimese vowels, there are 13 of them: ɛː, ɛ, eː, a, aː, o, oː, øː, yː u, uː, i, and iː. For the following explanations, the terms “short” and “long” refer to the vowel lengthening. In the front-short position are i and ɛ. In the front-long position are iː, yː, øː, ɛː, and eː. The only vowel in the middle-short position is a and the only one in the middle-long position is aː. The vowels in the back-short position are u and o. The vowels in the back-long positions are uː and oː. Due to the complexity of Sikkimese, it has been deemed difficult to analyze vowels on a much deeper level since there are different varieties of Sikkimese spoken in Northern and Eastern Sikkim. One of those varieties is the pronunciation of /a/ and /o/ being neutralized before the phoneme /ŋ/. Another variation is that the short /i/ vowel is usually pronounced as [ɪ] on a lower register rather than the long vowel /iː/ [iː] which is already quite low. One final variation is that although /ɛ/ and /ɛː/ are listed as short and long vowels respectively, they still fall under the same F1 hertz category, which is the frequency that is produced when saying these vowels. Below is a chart of Sikkimese vowels, also largely following Yliniemi (2005). is an allophone of , confined to appearing after /j/ in closed syllables In the Tibetan script, an abugida, the inherent vowel /a/ is unmarked. Language vocabulary Names In Sikkimese, first names are typically two disyllabic words, and are heavily influenced by the day of the week (a child was born), planetary words, and Buddhism. Names can also belong exclusively to one gender, or be gender-neutral. In official documents last names are used and vary in origin. Some may use clan