Wano language

Wano is a Papuan language of the Indonesian province of Central Papua.

Wano
Region	Central Papua
Ethnicity	Wano people
Native speakers	1,000 (2011)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea West Trans–New Guinea (Irian Highlands) Dani Wano
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wno
Glottolog	wano1243
ELP	Wano

Phonology

Consonant phonemes

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p b	t d		k	ʔ
Fricative	β
Approximant			j	w

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Close	a

As well as the monophthongs described above, Wano also has seven diphthongs: /i̯a/, /ɛi̯/, /ai̯/, /au̯/, /ɔi̯/, /ɔu̯/, and /ui̯/.

Allophony

• The voiced plosives /b/ and /d/ are imploded to /ɓ/ and /ɗ/ when word-initially and intervocalically.
• When a nasal occurs before /p/, /p/ becomes a prenasalized voiced plosive [ᵐb]. Similarly, when a nasal occurs before /t/ or /k/, they become, respectively, [ⁿd] and [ᵑɡ].
• /t/ and /k/ intervocalically become /ɾ/ and /ɣ/.
• /p/, /k/, /ɡ/, and /ɡ/'s allophone, [ᵑɡ] become labialized before /w/, with /ɡ/ becoming [ɣʷ].
• The sequences /tj/ and /dj/ become the palatal fricatives /ç ʝ/. However, this analysis more signifies the corresponding Dutch digraphs, since these have no morphological significance, and in the modern orthography these are written as ⟨c⟩ and ⟨j⟩.

Orthography

Here is the orthography used by Willem Burung on his works. These are not necessarily separate letters.

Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA
a	[a]	j	[ʝ]	o	[ɔ]
b	[ɓ]	k	[k]	p	[p]
c	[ç]	kʷ	[kʷ]	t	[t]
d	[ɗ]	m	[m]	u	[u]
e	[ɛ]	mb	[ᵐb]	v	[β]
g	[ɣ]	n	[n]	w	[w]
gw	[ɣʷ]	nd	[ⁿd]	y	[j]
i	[i]	ngg	[ᵑɡ]

Grammar

Nouns

Inalienable nouns could be pluralized by suffixing -i (after consonants) or -vi (after vowels), while alienable nouns do not (similar to Indonesian, where pluralization is optional). The inalienable plurals can be postposed with numerals (aburi kena "her two children").

See also

• Duvle-Wano Pidgin

Bibliography

• Burung, Willem (2016). A grammar of Wano (PhD thesis). University of Oxford.