Dobu language
Appearance
Dobu | |
---|---|
Dobuan | |
Native to | Papua New Guinea |
Region | Milne Bay Province, tip of Cape Vogel |
Native speakers | (10,000 cited 1998)[1] 60% monolingual[1] L2 speakers: 51,000 (2021)[1] |
Latin script (Dobuan alphabet) Dobuan Braille | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | dob |
Glottolog | dobu1241 |
Dobu or Dobuan is an Austronesian language spoken in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. It is a lingua franca for 100,000 people in D'Entrecasteaux Islands.
Phonology
[edit]Consonants
[edit]Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | lab. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | ||||
Plosive | voiceless | p | pʷ | t | k | kʷ | ʔ | ʔʷ | |
voiced | b | bʷ | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | ||||
Fricative | s | ||||||||
Nasal | m | mʷ | n | ||||||
Flap | ɺ | ||||||||
Approximant | j | w |
- Sounds /p, t, k/ may also be aspirated in free variation as [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] in all environments.
- The lateral flap /ɺ/ may fluctuate with an alveolar vibrant flap [ɾ] depending on the dialect of the speaker.
- /j/ may also fluctuate with a fricative [ʝ] within vocabulary.
Vowels
[edit]Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | u | |
Mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
Open | a |
- /a/ may be heard as [ʌ] in unstressed syllables.
- /ɔ/ may be heard as slightly more centralized [ɔ̽] when following labialized consonants in unstressed positions.
- /u/ may be heard as [ʊ] in unstressed syllables.[2]
External links
[edit]- An open access collection of singing in Dobu is available through Paradisec.
- Historical open access collections of recordings in Dobu are available through Paradisec, including the Malcome Ross collection (MR1) and two Arthur Campbell collections (AC1 and AC2)
References
[edit]