Kwara'ae language
The Kwara'ae language (previously called Fiu after the location of many of its speakers) is spoken in the north of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands. In 1999, there were 32,400 people known to speak the language. It is the largest indigenous vernacular of the Solomon Islands.
| Kwara'ae | |
|---|---|
| Fiu | |
| Native to | Solomon Islands |
| Region | Malaita Island |
Native speakers | 32,000 (1999)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kwf |
| Glottolog | kwar1239[2] |
Phonology
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nor. | lab. | ||||||
| Stop | voiceless | t | k | kʷ | ʔ | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||
| Fricative | (f) | s | x~h | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ŋʷ | |||
| Rhotic | ɾ | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximant | w | j | |||||
The /f/ sound is merged with /h/. Most speakers of Kwara'ae choose to pronounce /h/ as an /f/ sound in some vocabulary.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Low | a |
The sound [ə] is recognized as an allophone of /a/.[3] There is vowel reduction, so final /i/ and /u/ are often deleted. Before /i/, the vowel /a/ may become [e], forming the diphthong [ei].
gollark: Also, it's *phase* π.
gollark: Sorry, your bad puns temporarily drove me to being unable to play.
gollark: The SC server is used by a bunch of people to run websites and stuff.
gollark: Suuuuure.
gollark: PixelTech is bankrupt? Clearly I should acquire the company to save it from its badness.
References
- Kwara'ae at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kwara'ae". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Macdonald, Daryl Eveline (2010). A Grammar Sketch of Kwaraqae (Master of Arts thesis). University of Waikato. hdl:10289/5755.
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