Abau language

Abau
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Sandaun
Native speakers	7,300 (2000 census)[1]
Language family	Sepik Upper Sepik Abau
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	aau
Glottolog	abau1245[2]

Abau is a Papuan language spoken in the Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea, primarily along the shores of the Sepik River.

In 2002, there were estimated to be between 4,500 and 5,000 speakers, and this number does not appear to have declined since the first accurate count in the 1970s.

Abau is reported to have whistled speech.

Phonology

Vowels^[3]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

/ə/ appears only in medial positions.^[3]

Consonants^[3]

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n
Stop	p			k
Fricative		s			h
Flap		r
Approximant			j	w

/r/ has several allophones: word-initially, it is [l], after /n/ it is [d], [r] intervocalically, and [t] or [ɺ] word-finally. /h/ becomes [ç] before /i/ and [ɸ] before /u/. Stops are voiced when following nasal consonants.^[3]

Notes

1. Abau at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Abau". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Laycock (1965:116)

References

• Laycock, D.C. (1965), "Three Upper Sepik phonologies", Oceanic Linguistics 4 (1/2): 113–118, doi:10.2307/3622917, JSTOR 3622917

External links

• Papuaweb - a collection of source materials on Abau (PDF format)
• Phonology Essentials - Abau Language - paper by Arjen Lock on phonology of the language (PDF format)
• Abau basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• OLAC resources in and about the Abau language