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Austronesian language spoken in the Solomon Islands
The Kwara'ae language is spoken in the West, Central & Eastern regions 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 | 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/.[2] There is vowel reduction, so final /i/ and /u/ are often deleted. Before /i/, the vowel /a/ may become [e], forming the diphthong [ei].
References
- ^ Kwara'ae at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Macdonald, Daryl Eveline (2010). A Grammar Sketch of Kwaraqae (Master of Arts thesis). University of Waikato. hdl:10289/5755.
External links
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Lingua franca | |||||||||||||
Indigenous languages |
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