Amba language (Solomon Islands)

Amba
Aba
Native to	Solomon Islands
Region	Utupua Island
Native speakers	590 (1999)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Temotu Utupua–Vanikoro Utupua Amba
Language codes
ISO 639-3	utp
Glottolog	amba1266[2]

Amba (also known as Aba, Nembao or Nebao) is the main language spoken on the island of Utupua, in the easternmost province of the Solomon Islands.

Name

The speaker population calls their own language [aᵐba] (with prenasalised [ᵐb]). This name may be rendered Amba or Aba depending on spelling conventions, which have not been fixed yet for these languages.

Speakers of neighbouring Asumboa designate the Amba language as [neᵐbao]. This form, which may be spelled Nembao or Nebao, has sometimes been used by foreigners as another name for the Amba language.

References

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

• Tryon, Darrell (1994), "Language contact and contact-induced language change in the Eastern Outer Islands, Solomon Islands", in Tom Dutton; Darrell Tryon, Language contact and change in the Austronesian world, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 611–648.