Suau language

Suau
Iou
Region	Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea
Native speakers	7,810 (2000 census) L2 speakers: 13,000 (2021)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Papuan Tip Nuclear Suauic Suau
Language codes
ISO 639-3	swp
Glottolog	suau1242

Suau, also known as Iou, is an Oceanic language spoken in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken by 6,800 people and a further 14,000 as a lingua franca.

Phonology

Consonant sounds

		Labial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d	g
Nasal		m	n
Fricative		(f)	s		h
Lateral			l
Glide		w		j

• Some village dialects also include a fricative sound [f].
• /l/ can also be heard as a flap [ɾ] in free variation.
• /w/ may also rarely be pronounced as [v, β] among speakers.

Vowel sounds

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

External links

• Ekalesia Bukana (1895), Anglican Morning Prayer in Suau, digitized by Richard Mammana
• Paradisec has a number of collections of Suau materials, including two collections of Arthur Cappell's (AC1, AC2).