Its speakers are located primarily within the department of Bamboutos in the West Region of Cameroon.
As well, there is a possible syllabic nasal prefix, which assimilates to following consonants, and can carry a high or low tone.
[2] This is realized as a "homorganic voiceless fricative offglide", causing the voiceless fricatives and affricates to become geminate, as well as voiced sounds to form a cluster with the unvoiced sound; for example, [ts] becomes [ts:], and [dz] becomes [dzs].
However, a number of words also show this "aspiration" in positions without a following semivowel, all with the previous sounds being [bv], [f], [v], [dz], [s], or [z].
Additionally, certain allophones have separate letters assigned to them, namely [ʔ] ⟨'⟩, [p] ⟨p⟩, [l~ɭ] ⟨l⟩, [tʃ] ⟨c⟩, [ʃ] ⟨sh⟩, [ʒ~dʒ] ⟨j⟩.
Diphthongs /ie iε ia oe ʉe ʉa ue ua uɔ/ occur and are spelled as sequences of the two vowels would be.