Ásademóku

Ásademòku (, "seabird language") is the native language used by the Ásadebasa. As such, it is spoken in the far north of the Dzózó islands. It is a language isolate with no known relatives.

Etymology
The name Ásademóku literally means "seabird language" (ása "sea, ocean" + ade "bird" + móku "language") like named as such because of a special cultural significance of seabirds.

Phonology
The dialect described here is spoken in the south and has the most speakers of all the Ásademóku dialects.

Consonants
Ásademóku has 35 consonant phonemes shown in the table below along with two special phonemes /Q/ and /N/ whereas /Q/ induces gemination in the following consonant. /N/ is a nasal consonant that assimilates to the place of articulation of the consonant immediately following it including across word boundaries assuming there is no prosodic break. For example, /Np Nt Nk/ are realised as [mp nt ŋk]. If there is no such consonant it is realised as [ŋ].

Consonants can be classified as either "blunt" (plain) or "sharp" (palatalised).