| Also Known As: Manum,Manam language
Description:
Manam is a Kairiru-Manam language spoken mainly on the volcanic Manam Island, northeast of New Guinea.
Some vowels become glides in diphthongs, eg. /u/, /o/ -> [w] and /i/, /e/ → [j]. /i/ and /u/ are 'weaker' than /e/ and /o/, so that the syllable /kuo/ becomes [kwo] and not *[kuw]
According to Turner, /k/ is more and more often realized as [ʔ], while some older speakers have [q].
The Manam syllable is (C)(V1)V(V1)(C1), the only exception is a syllabic [m̩].
There are some phonotactic restrictions on the prevalent syllable structure. Eg. V1 cannot be [a], whereas V must be [a] as long as it’s not the syllable’s sole vowel. C can be any consonant, whereas C1 must be a nasal consonant.
Stress is phonemic: /ˈsara/ 'palm tree', /saˈra/ 'seagull'. The stress falls on one of the three last syllables of a word, and stressing the penult syllable is the most common: /ˈnatu/ 'child', /maˈlipi/ 'work'. If the last syllable ends in a nasal consonant, it will be stressed instead: /naˈtum/ 'your child'. Some inflections and affixes do not alter the stress of the root word: /iˈto/ 'he learned' (i- is a 3rd person prefix), /siˈŋabalo/ 'in the bush' (-lo is a locative suffix).
In the orthography,..... full article at Wikipedia |
