Kwara'ae language
| Kwara'ae | |
|---|---|
| Fiu | |
| Native to | Solomon Islands |
| Region | Malaita Island |
Native speakers | 32,000 (1999)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
kwf |
| Glottolog |
kwar1239[2] |
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.
Phonology
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nor. | lab. | ||||||
| Stop | voiceless | t | k | kʷ | ʔ | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||
| Fricative | (f) | s | h | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ŋʷ | |||
| Rhotic | ɾ | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximant | w | j | |||||
The sound of /h/ is merged with /f/. 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]
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. University of Waikato.
External links
| Official language | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lingua franca | |||||||||||||
| Indigenous languages |
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