Nthlakampx

Nthlakampx is a Native American Interior Salish language of the Pacific Northwest.

Due to its interesting phonetics, it is often used in tests to determine what phonemes infants can detect.

This phenomenon was documented by Werker and Tees (1984), who discovered that English-learning infants 6 – 8-month-olds discriminated Nthlakampx glottalized velar [k'] and uvular [q'] consonants (neither of which are phonemic in English) whereas 10– 12-month-olds did not.

References

• Phonology lecture at UDel
• Phonetic Detail by Daniel Swingley