The Manus languages are a subgroup of about two dozen

Oceanic languages The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...

located on

Manus Island Manus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth-largest island in Papua New Guinea, with an area of , measuring around . Manus Island is covered in rugged jungles w ...

and nearby offshore islands in

Manus Province Manus Province is the smallest Provinces of Papua New Guinea, province in Papua New Guinea in terms of both land area and population, with a land area of , but with more than of water, and the total population is 60,485 (2011 census). The provi ...

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 ...

. The exact number of languages is difficult to determine because they form a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

(Blust 2007:302). The name ''Manus'' (or ''Moanus'') originally designated an ethnic group whose members spoke closely related languages and whose coastal dwellers tended to build their houses on stilts out over the sea (Bowern 2011:6). Nowadays the whole population of Manus Province may call themselves 'Manus' people, so the original Manus are distinguished as ''Manus tru'' 'real Manus' (or 'Manus

sensu stricto ''Sensu'' is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular c ...

'). The language of the Manus people most intensively studied by anthropologists, from

Georg Thilenius Georg Christian Thilenius (4 October 1868 – 28 December 1937) was a German physician and anthropologist who was a native of Soden am Taunus. He studied medicine in Bonn and Berlin, and in 1896 was habilitated as an anatomist at the Universi ...

in the early 1900s through

Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Col ...

in the mid-1900s, is now called

Titan Titan most often refers to: * Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn * Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology Titan or Titans may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities Fictional locations * Titan in fiction, fictiona ...

(Bowern 2011).

Languages

According to Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002), the structure of the family is: *Manus **West Manus: Nyindrou, Sori-Harengan,

Hermit A hermit, also known as an eremite (adjectival form: hermitic or eremitic) or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions. Description In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Chr ...

(†), Bipi; Mondropolon, Tulu-Bohuai, Khehek (Drehet, Levei), Likum **Intermediate:

Loniu Loniu is an Austronesian language spoken along the southern coast of Los Negros Island in the Manus Province, immediately east of Manus Island in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Pap ...

– Mokerang, Pak-Tong **East Manus: Andra-Hus, Elu, Leipon, Papitalai, Ponam,

Ere Ere or ERE may refer to: * ''Environmental and Resource Economics'', a peer-reviewed academic journal * ERE Informatique, one of the first French video game companies * Ere language, an Austronesian language * Ebi Ere (born 1981), American-Nigeria ...

– Kele– Kurti, Koro– Lele– Nali–

One very distinctive phonological trait of these languages is the presence of

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

trill TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is a networking protocol for optimizing bandwidth and resilience in Ethernet networks, implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and ...

s (Blust 2007). The

bilabial trill The voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is , a small capital version of the Latin letter b, and the equivalent X-SAMPA ...

, which can be spelled ''mb'' or ''br,'' only occurs before , and sounds like in other environments. The alveolar trill , spelled ''ndr'' or ''dr,'' has no such distributional limitations (2007:303).

References

* Blust, Robert (2007). The prenasalised trills of Manus. In ''Language description, history, and development: Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley,'' ed. by Jeff Siegel, John Lynch, and Diana Eades, pp. 297–311. Creole Language Library vol. 30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Bowern, Claire (2011). ''Sivisa Titan: Sketch grammar, texts, vocabulary based on material collected by P. Josef Meier and Po Minis.'' Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication No. 38. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. * Hamel, Patricia J. (1994). ''A grammar and lexicon of Loniu, Papua New Guinea.'' Pacific Linguistics C-103. Canberra: The Australian National University. 275 pp. * Hamel, Patricia J. (1993). Serial verbs in Loniu and an evolving preposition. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 32:111–132. * Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross,

Terry Crowley Terrence Michael Crowley (born February 16, 1947) is an American former professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball as an outfielder, first baseman A first baseman, abbreviated 1B, is the player on a baseb ...

(2002). ''The Oceanic languages.'' Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. , OCLC 48929366. * Ohnemus, Sylvia (1998). ''An Ethnology of the Admiralty Islanders: The Alfred Bühler Collection, Museum der Kulturen, Basel.'' Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. . * Ross, M. D. (1988). ''Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of Western Melanesia.'' Pacific Linguistics C-98. Canberra: The Australian National University. 487 pp. {{Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages Admiralty Islands languages Languages of Manus Province