Terei or Buin, also known as Telei, Rugara, is the most populous Papuan language spoken to the east of New Guinea. There are about 27,000 speakers in the Buin District of Bougainville Province, Papua New Guinea.
| Terei | |
|---|---|
| Buin | |
| Region | Bougainville |
Native speakers | 27,000 (2003)[1] |
South Bougainville
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | buo |
| Glottolog | tere1278 |
Phonology
editThe phonology of the Buin language:[2]
| Labial | Alveolar | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | t | k g |
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ |
| Liquid | ɾ (l) |
The /ɡ/ sound does not occur word-initially and is often fricativised as [ɣ]. The phoneme /ɾ/ following an /n/ is pronounced as [d], and also occurs as [l] for an allophonic variant. When a /t/ sound occurs before an /i/, it is always pronounced as [tsi], and when occurring before a /u/ or /a/, it may be realized as [tsu] or [tsa] depending on the dialect.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i | u |
| Mid | e | o |
| Low | a | |
References
edit- ^ Terei at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Laycock, (2003). Pacific Linguistics.
External links
edit- Paradisec has a number of collections with materials for Terei language two collections of Arthur Cappell's materials (AC1, AC2).