The Abawiri language, is a

Lakes Plain language The Lakes Plain languages are a family of Papuan languages, spoken in the Lakes Plain of Indonesian New Guinea. They are notable for being heavily tonal and for their lack of nasal consonants. Classification The Lakes Plain languages were tenta ...

of Papua,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. It is spoken in the village of Fuau, located along the Dijai River, a tributary to the

Mamberamo River The Mamberamo (''Indonesian: Sungai Mamberamo'') is the second longest river on the island of New Guinea, after Sepik River (1,146 km) and third largest in Oceania by discharge (5,500 m3/s) volume after Fly River (7,500 m3/s) and Sepik (7,000 m3/ ...

. Clouse tentatively included Abawiri and neighboring Taburta ( Taworta) in an East Lakes Plain subgroup of the Lakes Plain family; due to the minimal data that was available on the languages at that time. With more data, the connection looks more secure. Like other Lakes Plain languages, Abawiri is notable for being heavily tonal and for its lack of

nasal consonants In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...

: there are no nasal or nasalized consonants or vowels, even allophonically.

Phonology

Abawiri has sixteen obstruent consonants (eight plain and eight labialized), as well as one sonorant consonant /ɾ/. The consonant and vowel charts below show the phonemes, followed by their representations in the community orthography (in ) where that representation is different from the phoneme symbol. Abawiri has seven vowels, including three high front vowels: /i/, /y/, and /i̝/.

References

East Lakes Plain languages Languages of western New Guinea {{papuan-lang-stub