Are there diphtongs in Orochon?
One of the contradictory issues in the Orochon phonology is the absence / presence of diphthongs. Within the theoretical study conducted, we compared the Orochon phonological system with the Chinese and acquired the information about phonological systems of other Tungus-Manchu languages that are closely related to Orochon - first of all, the Evenki language. Our experimental study aimed at analyzing acoustic features of the Orochon tokens where groups of vowels could possibly be formed and comparing them to the ones in Evenki. The major finding was that in the Oroqen Autonomous Banner dialect, the deletion of intervocalic/ j /, / w / and /ɡ/ caused / ea /, / ua /, and / u ə/ vowel-group forming that might enter the vowel system as diph- thongs in the nearest future. The same deletion occurred in Lesser Khingan dialect of Orochon leading to long vowel forming. In the Evenki Selemdzha sub-dialect, no deletion of the intervocalic consonants was found.