Ulumandaʼ is an Austronesian language of West Sulawesi, Indonesia.
It is nearly intelligible with other Pitu Ulunna Salu languages,[2] but Ulumanda’ is distinguished by an unusual series of front vowels.
The vowel inventory of Ulumandaʼ is as follows:[3] The attested consonant inventory is as follows: Ulumandaʼ is unusual among the Austronesian languages of Sulawesi for featuring a vowel harmony opposition of front vowels /æ, ø, y/ to corresponding back vowels /ɑ, o, u/ comparable to that of the Uralic languages.
Originally, fronted vowels arose from the fronting of back vowels before syllable-final velar consonants *k and *ŋ, but were phonemicized in final syllables when word-final *-m and *-n merged with *ŋ to result in -ŋ but did not front a preceding back vowel unlike original *-ŋ.
A contrastive pair includes /uraŋ/ "person" vs. /uræŋ/ [yræŋ] "shrimp".