Motu (sometimes called Pure Motu or True Motu to distinguish it from
Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of its capital city, Port Moresby.
It is a simplified version of Motu, from the Austronesian language famil ...
) is a
Central Papuan Tip language that is spoken by the
Motuans, an indigenous
ethnic group
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...
of
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 ...
. It is commonly used today in the region, particularly around the capital,
Port Moresby
(; Tok Pisin: ''Pot Mosbi''), also referred to as Pom City or simply Moresby, is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea. It is one of the largest cities in the southwestern Pacific (along with Jayapura) outside of Australia and New ...
.
A simplified form of Motu developed as a trade language in the Papuan region, in the southeast of the main island 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 ...
, originally known as Police Motu, and today known as
Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of its capital city, Port Moresby.
It is a simplified version of Motu, from the Austronesian language famil ...
. After
Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin ( ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student's Handbook'', Edinburgh ; ), often referred to by English speakers as New Guinea Pidgin or simply Pidgin, is an English-based creole languages, English creole language spoken throughou ...
and
English, Hiri Motu was at the time of independence the third most commonly spoken of the more than 800
languages of Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, a sovereign state in Oceania, is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. According to ''Ethnologue'', there are 839 living languages spoken in the country. In 2006, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael So ...
, although its use has been declining for some years, mainly in favour of Tok Pisin.
Motu is classified as one of the
Malayo-Polynesian languages
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeas ...
and bears some linguistic similarities to
Polynesian and
Micronesian languages
The Micronesian languages form a family of Oceanic languages. The twenty languages are known for their lack of plain labial consonant and have instead two series, palatalized and labio-velarized labials, similar to the related Kanak languages ...
.
Phonology
Motu is a typical Austronesian language in that it is heavily vowel-based. Every Motu syllable ends in a vowel sound — this may be preceded by a single consonant (there are no "consonant clusters"). Vowel sounds may be either
monophthong
A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be ...
s (consisting of a single basic sound) or
diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
s (consisting of more than one basic sound).
There are only five vowel sounds ; Motu diphthongs are written and pronounced as combinations of two vowels. The sounds ''oi'' and ''oe'', ''ai'' and ''ae'', ''au'' and ''ao'' (approximately like English ''boy'', ''high'', ''cow''), and ''r'' and ''l'' are distinguished in Motu but not in Hiri Motu. There is no letter ''f''; when it occurs in loan words, it is usually represented as ''p''.
* Taylor (1970) claims that the velar stops and fricative are
advanced
The Advanced Party (), otherwise known as the Advanced Association () was a liberal and centrist Zionist political association in Mandatory Palestine founded by several urban liberal Zionists. The party was founded in order to represent the voice ...
before front vowels or retracted before back vowels.
Motu
Braille
Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone device ...
has the
usual letter assignments apart from ḡ, which is .
[Unesco reports the language as simply "Motu", but ''Ethnologue'' 17 only notes braille usage for Hiri Motu. However, Hiri Motu does not have the letter ḡ.]
Notes
References
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
*
William George Lawes, ''Grammar and vocabulary of language spoken by Motu tribe (New Guinea)''
*
first edition Sydney: Thomas Richards, 1885.
*
second and revised edition Sydney: Charles Potter, 1888.
*
third and enlarged edition Sydney: Charles Potter, 1896.
*
Paradisec ha
a number of collections that include materials on Motu languages
{{Oceania topic, Languages of
Central Papuan Tip languages
Languages of Central Province (Papua New Guinea)