Boazi (Bwadji), also known as Kuni after one of its dialects, is a
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a ...
spoken in the
Western Province
Western Province or West Province may refer to:
*Western Province, Cameroon
*Western Province, Rwanda
*Western Province (Kenya)
*Western Province (Papua New Guinea)
*Western Province (Solomon Islands)
*Western Province, Sri Lanka
*Western Provinc ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
by the Bwadji people in the vicinity of
Lake Murray and is written using the Latin script, with for , for , and for (relatively infrequent) vowel length. Some recordings of songs and stories have been made in this language.
Phonology
* /l/ can fluctuate as sounds
~ d ~ ɾ Sounds
¾and
are more common in word-medial positions.
* /q/ may also be heard as a retracted velar plosive
Ì in free variation.
* /ᶰq/ can also be heard as a prenasal velar fricative
µ‘É£in free variation.
* Sounds /s, z/ tend to become alveolo-palatal
•, Ê‘when in the environment of a high vowel.
* Sounds /v, z/ tend to be devoiced
̥, z̥in word-final positions.
* /f/ may be heard in free fluctuation with
¸within the environment of a high vowel.
Further reading
*Drabbe, Petrus. 1954. ''Talen en dialecten van zuid-west Nieuw-Guinea
anguages and Dialects of Southwest New Guinea'. Posieux/Fribourg: Instituut Anthropos.
*Edwards-Fumey, Deborah. 2006. ''The verb subject prefix in Kuni''. MA thesis: Universität Bern.
References
Boazi languages
Languages of Western Province (Papua New Guinea)
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