Wuvulu-Aua language
| Wuvulu-Aua | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | Wuvulu and Aua Islands, Manus Province |
|
Native speakers
|
1,500 (2004) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | wuvu1239 |
The Wuvulu-Aua language is spoken on Wuvulu and Aua Islands by approximately 1500 people scattered around the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea. Although the Wuvulu-Aua language has a similar grammatical structure, word order, and tense to other Oceanic languages, it has an unusually complex morphology.
The Wuvulu Island is located in the Papua New Guinea Province and reaches about 10 feet above sea level. As a member of the Admiralty Islands, the Wuvulu and Aua islands are a part of the Bismarck Archipelago that includes other provinces such as the New Ireland province, the East New Britain province, the Morobe province and much more. Wuvulu is spoken by an estimated 1,500 people in the Manus Province. There are only approximately 1,300 speakers of the language on Wuvulu and Aua. The remaining speakers of Wuvulu inhabit either the other islands located in the Papua New Guinea territory.
Wuvulu is most similar to Austronesian, Malayo-Paolynesian, and other Oceanic languages scattered around the Admiralty Islands. Wuvulu-Aua is one of only three languages categorized in the Western subgroup of the Admiralty language. The other two languages are Seimat and Kaniet; however, Kaniet is now an extinct language.
There are three different dialects of Wuvulu that are unique to the different clans located on the island: the Onne dialect, the Auna dialect, and the Aua dialect which is native to the Aua island. Each dialect differs in phoneme, distinguishing them from each other. However, the individual islands Wuvulu and Aua have a lexical and phonological distinction.
The Wuvulu-Aua language is in the family of Austronesian language family. After that, it belongs to Malayo-Polynesian which is one of the major Nuclear Austronesian language family. Next, based on the location, The Wuvulu-Aua is in the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian family. If we classify it more explicitly, it is the member of Oceanic Western Admiralty island language family. In fact, Wuvulu-Aua is made up of two languages, Wuvulu and Aua. These two languages vary in the pronunciation of certain consonants like /r/.
Most Researchers believed that the Proto-Eastern Malayo Polynesian (PEMP) Language was produced in the area called "Bird's Head", which is in the north-west island of New Guinea. Later, PEMP developed different descended language and Proto Oceanic (PO) was one of them. PO not only reached to the northern coast of New Guinea and Indonesia, but also to Wuvulu, an island of the Bismarck archipelago. There are about 31 languages in the Admiralty Subgroup of Oceanic language that is derived from PO. 28 languages belong to Eastern Admirally Subground and the other 3 languages (Wuvulu-Aua, Seimat and Kaniet) are in Western Admirally Subgroup.
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