Hoava language
| Hoava | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Solomon Islands |
| Region | Marovo Lagoon (Nggerasi Lagoon), New Georgia Island |
|
Native speakers
|
460 (1999) |
|
Austronesian
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | hoav1238 |
Hoava is an Oceanic language spoken by 1000–1500 people on New Georgia Island, Solomon Islands. Speakers of Hoava are multilingual and usually also speak Roviana, Marovo, SI Pijin, English.
Hoava is an Austronesian language that is spoken mostly on the island of New Georgia. New Georgia is a mountainous island, 85 kilometres long and 41 kilometres wide at its widest part, with a total area of 2,145 square kilometres, covered with dense rainforests (Davis 2003). The island of New Georgia was involved in WWII that was later named the New Georgia Campaign which lasted from June 20 to November 3.
Hoava is an Austronesian language that is spoken in 3 known locations: Western Province, New Georgia island, North Marovo lagoon, but mainly New Georgia island of the Solomon Islands. According to a 1986 census there are about 2,360 speakers of the language, but language is spoken by 460 people in latest census that was taken in 1999 suggesting a huge drop off in the number of speakers.
Hoava uses 16 consonants in its phoneme system, /p, t, b, d, s, β, m, n, r, l, dʒ, k, g, y, ŋ, h/.
Hoava uses 5 vowels: /i/,/ɛ/,/a/,/ɔ/,/u/. There is no phonemic distinction of vowel length, although vowels can be lengthened when stressed (Davis 2003). The vowels can be combined into pairs with the weight of two syllables (Davis 2003).
Hoava has an open syllable structure of (C)V. Two vowels occurring together are counted as two syllables, since they function as such for transitive marking rules (Davis 2003). For many Oceanic languages of the Austronesian family group it is common that words do not end in consonant..
In traditional typology Hoava is a VSO language. There are some modifications to this particular pattern for focusing and topicalization purposes (Davis 2003).
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