Orokolo is a Trans–New Guinea language of the Eleman branch spoken in Ihu Rural LLG,

Gulf Province Gulf Province is a province of Papua New Guinea located on the southern coast. The provincial capital is Kerema. The 34,472 km2 province is dominated by mountains, lowland river deltas, and grassland flood plains. In Gulf Province, the Kiko ...

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 ...

by about 50,000 people (2010). Alternate names are Bailala, Haira, Kaipi, Kairu-Kaura, Muro, Muru, Vailala, and West Elema. It is spoken in various villages, including Vailala (). It is notable for having a very small consonant inventory.

Literature

This first

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

(''Pupu Oharo Āre'') was translated by the Rev. S. H. Dewdney, a Congregational missionary with the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed tradition, Reformed in outlook, with ...

, and Lavako Maika, an evangelist. It was published by the

British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The ...

in 1963.

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...

, called ''Genese'', was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

in 1970.

Ruth Ruth (or its variants) may refer to: Places France * Château de Ruthie, castle in the commune of Aussurucq in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département of France Switzerland * Ruth, a hamlet in Cologny United States * Ruth, Alabama * Ruth, Ark ...

, called ''Rute'', was published by the Bible Society in Australia, in 1972.

Phonology

Orokolo has six consonant phonemes. /m l/ are

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

nword-initially and oral � lintervocalically. The alveolar plosive /t/ is about 10 times rarer than it is in the related language Toaripi. Most instances of historical /t/ shifted to /k/ in Orokolo, as shown by the cognates below. The exception to this is when */t/ followed /i/ and preceded /a/, in which case it was retained in Orokolo and the Sepoe dialect of Toaripi, but shifted to /s/ in Toaripi proper. However, since original /k/ still appears in this position (e.g. /heaikapo/ "long"), /t/ and /k/ are distinct phonemes and not

allophones In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...

. The other major sound change which characterises Orokolo is the shift of */f/ and */s/ to /h/, reducing the fricative inventory to one member; compare for instance Orokolo /hapa/ "open" and /ahe/ "sugarcane" with Toaripi /fapai/, /ase/. Orokolo also has six vowels, giving it an unusually low consonant-vowel ratio of 1. /a/ may be pronounced as �when preceding a long stressed vowel. In other unstressed positions, it can be pronounced as � /o/ and /ɔ/ are not distinguished orthographically, both being written ''o''.

External links

* Materials on Orokolo are included in the open access

Arthur Capell Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages. Early life Capell was born in Newtown, New South W ...

collection
AC1
and Tom Dutton
TD1
collection held by Paradisec. * The New Testament is on YouVersio

References

{{Languages of Papua New Guinea Eleman languages Languages of Gulf Province