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Roviana

Roviana is an Austronesian language spoken in Solomon Islands.

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Roviana · 8.2°S 157.4°E

Roviana is a member of the Northwest Solomonic branch of Oceanic languages. It is spoken around Roviana and Vonavona lagoons at the north central New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. It has 10,000 first-language speakers and an additional 16,000 people mostly over 30 years old speak it as a second language (Raymond 2005). In the past, Roviana was widely used as a trade language and further used as a lingua franca, especially for church purposes in the Western Province, but now it is being replaced by the Solomon Islands Pijin. Published studies on Roviana include: Ray (1926), Waterhouse (1949) and Todd (1978) contain the syntax of Roviana.

Corston-Oliver (1996 & 2002) discuss ergativity in Roviana.

Todd (2000) and Ross (1988) discuss the clause structure in Roviana. Schuelke (2020) discusses grammatical relations and syntactic ergativity in Roviana.

From Wikipedia · Roviana language · CC BY-SA 4.0

Words in Roviana

MeaningWordRomanization
womanbarikaleqe
persontinoni*
namepoza*
eyemata*
eartaliNa*
noseisu*
toothlivo*
tonguemea*
handlima*
bloodehara*
bonesusuri*
skinkapu*
breastsusu*
liverbero*
waterkolo
firenika*
starpinopino*
stonepatu*
leafelo*
nightmuho*
dogsiki*
fishixana*
lousexutu*
onekeke
twokarua*
fivelima
Iarau*
youxamu*
drinknapo*
seedoxor*

* in the simplified ASJP transcription

Most similar languages

Vocabulary

Grammar

Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.

Nearby languages

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