Suau, also known as Iou, is an
Oceanic language
The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...
spoken in the
Milne Bay Province
Milne Bay is a province of Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Alotau. The province covers 14,345 km² of land and 252,990 km² of sea, within the province there are more than 600 islands, about 160 of which are inhabited. The province has a ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. It is spoken by 6,800 people and a further 14,000 as a
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
.
Phonology
* Some village dialects also include a fricative sound
* /l/ can also be heard as a flap
¾in free variation.
* /w/ may also rarely be pronounced as
, β
The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
among speakers.
External links
Ekalesia Bukana (1895) Anglican Morning Prayer in Suau, digitized by Richard Mammana
*Paradisec ha
a number of collections of Suau materials including two collections of
Arthur Cappell's
AC1AC2
.
References
Nuclear Papuan Tip languages
Languages of Milne Bay Province
{{PapuanTip-lang-stub