Mbe language

Mbe is a language spoken by the Mbube people of the Ogoja, Cross River State region of Nigeria, numbering about 65,000 people in 2011. As the closest relative of the Ekoid family of the Southern Bantoid languages, Mbe is fairly close to the Bantu languages. It is tonal and has a typical Niger–Congo noun-class system.

Vowels
Vowels are.

Consonants
Mbe has a rather elaborate consonant inventory compared to the Ekoid languages, presumably due to contact from neighbouring Upper Cross River languages.

All Mbe consonants apart from the labial–velars and  have labialised counterparts. ( is presumably .) In addition, the non-labialised peripheral stops (palatalised would be ) and the liquids  have palatalised counterparts.

There are a few consonants that only occur in ideophones, such as.

An interesting additional contrast is between fortis and lenis. Fortis (long?) half-rounds a following vowel such as, whereas lenis  does not. This distinction may be being lost. (Blench)

Tone
Tones are high, low, rising, falling and a downstep; rising and falling may be tone sequences.