Amba (also known as ''Aba'', ''Nembao'' or ''Nebao'') is the main language spoken on the island of

Utupua Utupua is an island in the Santa Cruz Islands, located 66 km to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group, between Vanikoro and Santa Cruz proper ( Nendo Island). This island belongs administratively to the Temotu Province of the Solom ...

, in the easternmost province of the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its ca ...

. Tryon (1994).

Name

The speaker population calls their own language (with

prenasalised Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather t ...

). This name may be rendered ''Amba'' or ''Aba'' depending on spelling conventions, which have not been fixed yet for these languages. Speakers of neighbouring Asumboa designate the Amba language as . This form, which may be spelled ''Nembao'' or ''Nebao'', has sometimes been used by foreigners as another name for the Amba language.

References

Bibliography

*. Languages of the Solomon Islands Temotu languages {{oceanic-lang-stub