’Auhelawa is an Austronesian language

Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

 spoken by about 1,200 people in Nuakata Island

Nuakata Island

Nuakata Island is a small, mountainous island in the Goschen Strait south of Normanby Island and east of East Cape. It is part of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea....

 and the southeastern tip of Normanby Island

Normanby Island, Papua New Guinea

Normanby Island is a volcanic, 400 square mile , L-shaped island, the southern most island in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands group...

 in Milne Bay Province

Milne Bay Province

Milne Bay is a province of Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Alotau. The province covers 14,000 km² of land and 252,990 km² of sea, within the province there are more than 600 islands, about 160 of which are inhabited...

, Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

.

’Auhelawa examples

A: Auge, yauwedo. Haidova u lalau?
(My friend, hello. Where are you going?)

B: Ya lalau oyai. Yagu oya vauvauna ya tudai. Owa haidova u lau?
(I am going to the garden. I dig my new garden. Where did you go?)

A: Ya dobi gogowai yada bada ehebo ya ita. Teina gona sabate mata yana vada vauvauna ya abi. (I went down to the village to see one of our uncles. Next week I will build his new house.)

B: Yau dova nuwanuwagu yada bada ya hagui. Ebe u dobi u vada abi, u lauma u vaigau ta dobi ta paihowa. (I also want to help our uncle. When you go down to housebuild, you come and get me and we go down and work.)

A: Ausala. Mata ta itago. (Good. We will see you.)

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
High	i	u
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	ɛ	ɔ
Low	a

Consonants

Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...		Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...		Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Plain	Labialized		Plain	Labialized	Plain	Labialized	Plain	Labialized
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	Voiceless	p	pʷ	t			(k)		ʔ	ʔʷ
	Voiced	b	bʷ	d			ɡ	ɡʷ
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		m	mʷ	n
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	Voiceless			s					h
	Voiced		β
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...					j	ɥ
Lateral approximant Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....				l

/k/ occurs only in loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

s.

Writing system

’Auhelawa is written in the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

. About 85% of the population is literate

Literacy

Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...

.

A a	B b	Bw bw	D d	E e	G g	Gw gw	H h	I i	K k	L l	M m	Mw mw
/a/	/b/	/bʷ/	/d/	/ɛ/	/ɡ/	/ɡʷ/	/h/	/i/	/k/	/l/	/m/	/mʷ/
N n	O o	P p	Pw pw	S s	T t	U u	V v	W w	Y y	’	’W ’w]]
/n/	/ɔ/	/p/	/pʷ/	/s/	/t/	/u/	/β/	/ɥ/	/j/	/ʔ/	/ʔʷ/

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:kud