Ejective Consonant - Occurrence in Languages

Occurrence in Languages

Ejectives occur in about 20% of the world's languages. Ejectives that phonemically contrast with pulmonic consonants occur in about 15% of languages around the world. They are extremely common in northwest North America, and frequently occur throughout the western parts of both North and South America. They are also common in eastern and southern Africa. In Eurasia, the Caucasus forms an island of ejective languages. Elsewhere they are rare.

Language families which distinguish ejective consonants include all three Caucasian families (Northwest Caucasian languages, Northeast Caucasian languages and Kartvelian Georgian language); the Athabaskan, Siouan and Salishan families of North America, along with the many diverse families of the Pacific Northwest from central California to British Columbia; the Mayan family and Aymara; the southern varieties of Quechua (Qusqu-Qullaw); the Afro-Asiatic family (notably most of the Cushitic and Omotic languages, Hausa and South Semitic languages like Amharic and Tigrinya) and a few Nilo-Saharan languages; Sandawe, Hadza, and the Khoisan families of southern Africa. Among the scattered languages with ejectives elsewhere are Itelmen of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages and Yapese of the Austronesian family. According to the glottalic theory, the Proto-Indo-European language had a series of ejectives, although no attested Indo-European language retained these sounds; nevertheless, ejectives are found in the Indo-European Ossetic and Eastern Armenian; both have acquired ejectives under the influence of the nearby Caucasian language families.

It had once been predicted that both ejectives and implosives would not be found in the same language, but this is now shown to be incorrect, both being found phonemically at several points of articulation in at least the Nilo-Saharan languages Gumuz, Me'en, and T'wampa. Nguni languages such as Zulu have an implosive b alongside a series of allophonically ejective stops. Dahalo of Kenya has both ejectives and implosives, as well as clicks.

The fictional language of the Na'vi, seen and heard in the film Avatar, distinguishes ejective stops from plosives.