Terei or Buin, also known as ''Telei, Rugara'', is the most populous
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
spoken to the east of
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
. There are about 27,000 speakers in the
Buin District of
Bougainville Province
Bougainville ( ; ; Tok Pisin: ''Bogenvil''), officially the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (Tok Pisin: ''Otonomos Region bilong Bogenvil''), is an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea. The largest island is Bougainville Island, while the r ...
,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
.
Phonology
The phonology of the Buin language:
[Laycock, (2003). Pacific Linguistics.]
The /É¡/ sound does not occur word-initially and is often fricativised as
£ The phoneme /ɾ/ following an /n/ is pronounced as
and also occurs as
for an allophonic variant. When a /t/ sound occurs before an /i/, it is always pronounced as
si and when occurring before a /u/ or /a/, it may be realized as
suor
sadepending on the dialect.
References
External links
* Paradisec ha
a number of collections with materials for Terei languagetwo collections of
Arthur Cappell's materials
AC1AC2
.
Languages of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville
South Bougainville languages
{{papuan-lang-stub