Kovai (Kobai, Kowai) 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 on

Umboi Island Umboi (also named Rooke or Siassi) is a volcanic island between the mainland of Papua New Guinea and the island of New Britain. It is separated from New Britain by the Dampier Strait, and Huon Peninsula and New Guinea by the Vitiaz Strait. It ha ...

, halfway between mainland

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 ...

and the island of

New Britain New Britain () is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from New Guinea by a northwest corner of the Solomon Sea (or with an island hop of Umboi Island, Umboi the Dampie ...

, and mostly within the

caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the str ...

of that volcanic island.

Phonology

Vowels

* Vowels may be heard as lax � ɛ ʌ ɔ ʊwhen in closed syllables.

Consonants

* In word-final position /b ɡ/ can be heard as devoiced

̥ ɡ̊ A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some Letter (alphabet), letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts. Rings Distinct letter The character Å (å) is derived from an A with a ring. It i ...

and may also be realized as fricatives � ɣin intervocalic positions.

References

External links

Languages of Morobe Province Huon languages {{TNG-lang-stub