Samwé (samoe), also known as Wara (ouara, ouala), is a Gur language of Burkina. Dialects are Negueni-Klani, Ouatourou-Niasogoni, and Soulani. Niasogoni speakers have difficulty with Negueni, but not vice versa.
/s/ is voiced [z] intervocalically and after nasals, [ʃ] before /ia/ and /ie/, and [s] elsewhere. /s/ can be lenited to [ɹ], which Ouattara represents as [z̞]. As with stops, voicing and lenition are in free variation.[7]
/ɾ/ can also be realized as [r] or [ɹ].[8]/ɾ/ is also in free variation with /n/ in some words. Sometimes, /ɾn/ becomes /nn/ or /rr/.[9]
/l/ and /n/ are contrastive, but roughly 20 words have /l~n/ in free variation.[9]
Vowels
Samwe has 20 vowels: 7 short oral vowels, 7 long oral vowels, 3 short nasal vowels, and 3 long nasal vowels.
Samwe has two types of vowel harmony: ATR harmony and front-back harmony. /ɛ,ɔ/ do not occur in stems with /i,e,o,u/.[11] Front and back vowels (/i,e/ and /u,o) do not co-occur in disyllabic imperative verb stems, but this rule is not followed in other verb forms.[12]/a/ is neutral in both types.[13]
Ouattara, Virpi (2015). A phonological and tonal analysis of Samue using Optimality Theory (Thesis). University of Turku. hdl:10024/104773. ISBN978-951-29-6125-2.