'Auhelawa language
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ʼAuhelawa | ||
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Spoken in: | Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea | |
Total speakers: | 1,200 | |
Language family: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central-Eastern Eastern Oceanic Western Papuan Tip Nuclear Suauic ʼAuhelawa |
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Writing system: | Latin alphabet | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | none | |
ISO 639-2: | map | |
ISO 639-3: | kud | |
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. |
ʼAuhelawa is an Austronesian language spoken by about 1,200 people (as of 1998) in Nuakata Island and the southeastern tip of Normanby Island in Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea.
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[edit] ʼAuhelawa Sampler
A: Auge, yauwedo. Haidova u lalau? (My friend, hello. Where are you going?)
B: Ya lalau oyai. Yagu oya vauvauna ya tudai. Owa haidova u lau? (I am going to the garden. I dig my new garden. Where did you go?)
A: Ya dobi gogowai yada bada ehebo ya ita. Teina gona sabate mata yana vada vauvauna ya abi. (I went down to the village to see one of our uncles. Next week I will build his new house.)
B: Yau dova nuwanuwagu yada bada ya hagui. Ebe u dobi u vada abi, u lauma u vaigau ta dobi ta paihowa. (I also want to help our uncle. When you go down to housebuild, you come and get me and we go down and work.)
A: Ausala. Mata ta itago. (Good. We will see you.)
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Vowels
Front | Back | |
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High | i | u |
Mid | ɛ | ɔ |
Low | a |
[edit] Consonants
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
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Plain | Labialized | Plain | Labialized | Plain | Labialized | Plain | Labialized | |||
Stop | Voiceless | p | pʷ | t | (k) | ʔ | ʔʷ | |||
Voiced | b | bʷ | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||||
Nasal | m | mʷ | n | |||||||
Fricative | Voiceless | s | h | |||||||
Voiced | β | |||||||||
Approximant | j | ɥ | ||||||||
Lateral approximant | l |
/k/ occurs only in loanwords.
[edit] Writing system
ʼAuhelawa is written in the Latin alphabet. About 85% of the population is literate.
A a | B b | Bw bw | D d | E e | G g | Gw gw | H h | I i | K k | L l | M m | Mw mw |
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/a/ | /b/ | /bʷ/ | /d/ | /ɛ/ | /ɡ/ | /ɡʷ/ | /h/ | /i/ | /k/ | /l/ | /m/ | /mʷ/ |
N n | O o | P p | Pw pw | S s | T t | U u | V v | W w | Y y | ʼ | ʼW ʼw | |
/n/ | /ɔ/ | /p/ | /pʷ/ | /s/ | /t/ | /u/ | /β/ | /ɥ/ | /j/ | /ʔ/ | /ʔʷ/ |