the Ditti who raise their children until school-going age without the use of Arabic. Phonology Vowels The table below illustrates the vowels of Afitti; the symbols in parentheses represent prominent allophones of the phoneme beside which they appear. Afitti has six vowels that have an allophonic variation that is mostly predicted by the syllable structure. Vowels are relatively short in Afitti with occasional lengthening occurring in stressed syllables. Furthermore, vowels are shorter in closed syllables than they are in open syllables. In closed syllables, vowels become open and sometimes centralized. The schwa, however, is always short and limited in distribution, never being found in word-final position. It remains short when the syllable is stressed and in such cases the consonant that follows it may be geminated. Combinations of two vowels are common in Afitti and include combinations where the second vowel is schwa. There are no clear (level) diphthongs and the vowels are given individual tones that can be analyzed as part of different syllables. Sequences of three or more vowels were not found within the confines of one word. Consonants The table below displays the consonants of Afitti; sounds in parentheses are of uncertain phonemic status. Afitti has nasals and plosives at four places of articulation: labial, alveolar, palatal, and velar. The plosives have a voicing contrast primarily found in word-initial position. This distinction is mostly lost in intervocalic position with neutralization in favor of the voiced variant. The majority of plosives are voiceless in final position due to a devoicing process affecting other sounds as well. No words begin with a voiceless bilabial stop and final voiceless stops are often unreleased, but these variants occur in free variation with a released allophone. Alveolar and dental stops also appear in free variation. The dental variant appears with some speakers if they wish to stress the consonant that is being pronounced. Nasals occur in all positions, including as syllabic nasals. They usually assimilate to a following consonant. When a word-initial velar nasal follows a word-final, voiceless velar stop, the stop will be unreleased and voiced. The liquids /l/ and /r/, like the plosives, tend to become devoiced in word-final position. For both /l/ and /r/ their devoiced allophones can be easily mistaken for a fricative because of the heavy airflow. Like the nasals, the liquids have a syllabic variant. The syllabic /r/ is common in the language and is found