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 ...

and nearby offshore islands in

Manus Province Manus Province is the smallest 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 provincial town of Manus is Lorengau. ...

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 ...

. 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 language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

(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 in the early 1900s through

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

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 C ...

(†), Bipi; Mondropolon, Tulu-Bohuai, Khehek (Drehet, Levei), Likum **Intermediate: Loniu– Mokerang, Pak-Tong **East Manus: Andra-Hus,

Elu Eḷu, also Hela or Helu, is a hypothesized language Middle Indo-Aryan language or Prakrit of the 3rd century BCE. It is ancestral to the Sinhalese and Dhivehi languages. R. C. Childers, in the ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'', state ...

, Leipon, Papitalai, Ponam, Ere– Kele– Kurti,

Koro Koro may refer to: Geography *Koro Island, a Fijian island *Koro Sea, in the Pacific Ocean *Koro, Ivory Coast *Koro, Mali *Koro, Wisconsin, United States, an unincorporated community Languages *Koro language (India), an endangered language spoken ...

– 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 such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather ...

trills (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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\. Features Features of the voiced ...

, 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 (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. {{Austronesian languages Admiralty Islands languages Languages of Manus Province