by a vowel, it is released and the release repeats the continuant so that it can be said to act like the onset of the following syllable, e.g. man’ -ok (be.able-COS) ‘was able’. In a glottalized syllable with final the glottal stop usually precedes the oral closure of the when followed by another vowel, e.g. mel’ -a (be.fat-CUST)‘is fat’. This phenomenon also happens, but less frequently, with syllables ending in , e.g. nom’ -a (be.soft-CUST) ‘is soft’. Vowels Atong has six vowel qualities occurring in the native vocabulary as well as in loanwords: . In addition, there are four long vowels which are only found in loanwords from English and Indic languages. These are usually pronounced longer than the indigenous vowels: /iː/ , /eː/ , /aː/ and /oː/ . In the orthography, long vowels are represented by double letters. Note that /uː/ and /əː/ are not attested. Examples of minimal pairs and near minimal pairs are given in the table below. The difference between the loan and the indigenous words is a matter of vowel quality. In closed syllables, where Atong vowels would be pronounced lowered and more retracted, the loan vowels will have the same quality as the Atong vowels in open syllables. Not all loan words that have long vowels in the source language have long vowels in Atong, and not all loans that can be pronounced with a long vowel in Atong have a long vowel in the source language. Syllable structure The canonical syllable structure of Atong is (C)V(C), where C stands for any consonant and V for any vowel. This structure can be maintained if words like mai 'rice', askui 'star' and chokhoi 'fishing basket' are analysed as containing a vowel and a final glide (see glide (linguistics)). The glide, presented by the letter i, is the coda of the syllable rather than an element of the nucleus. In phonemic writing the words would look like this: /maj/, /askuj/, /t͡ɕokʰoj/. There are two glides in the language: /w/ and /j/. The glide /w/ occurs in both syllable initial and syllable final position, e.g. wak 'pig' and saw 'rotten, fermented' respectively. The glide /j/ occurs only syllable finally, e.g. tyi /təj/ 'water'. Traditional words with the structure CVVC do not exist, e.g. *gaut or *main (where the asterisk [*] indicates the non-existence of these words). If a diphthong is defined as two vowels that can occur