Terei or Buin, also known as ''Telei, Rugara'', is the most populous
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 to the east of
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...
. There are about 27,000 speakers in the
Buin District of
Bougainville Province Bougainville may refer to:
Places
* Autonomous Region of Bougainville, historically known as the North Solomons,
** Bougainville Island, the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea
*** Bougainville campaign, Wor ...
,
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 ...
.
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