Kala language

Kala, also known as Kela, is an Austronesian language spoken by about 2200 people in several villages along the south coast of the Huon Gulf between Salamaua Peninsula and the Paiawa River, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea.

Overview

The principal villages from north to south are:

Salamaua Rural LLG
*Manindala
*Lambu
*Apoze
*Kamiali
Morobe Rural LLG
*Alẽso
*Kui

There are four dialects of Kala. The three southern villages share a dialect with very minor differences found in the village of Kui while each of the northern villages has its own dialect.
Linguistically, Kala belongs to the North [Huon Gulf languages] and Kala-speakers appear to have arrived on the southern coast of the Gulf relatively recently, beginning perhaps as late as the 17th century.

Phonology

Kala has five basic vowels, as well as contrastive nasal vowels.

	Front	Central	Back
High
High-mid
Low

The consonants of Kala are listed below.

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive
Fricative
Nasal
Approximant
Tap/flap

The voiced alveolar fricative only exists in the dialects spoken in Apoze and Lambu villages.
In 2010, anthropologists from the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus, worked in a collaborative project with the Kala Language Committee, a group of individuals concerned with strengthening Kala language amongst their communities, to decide on a Kala orthographic system. The practical writing system for Kala includes the following letters:. The committee chose the tilde symbol to represent nasal vowels in their practical writing system as it reminded them of ocean waves since they are coastal people.

Morphology

Names

Source:
Like most of the languages around the Huon Gulf, Kala has a system of birth order names. Each dialect has their own terms for birth-order names. Compare Numbami.

Birth order Southern Dialect	Sons	Daughters
1	Alisa	Kale
2	Aniya Aniã	Aiga
3	Gwe	Aya Aiya
4	Aluŋ Alũ	Dã
5	Sele	Auya Owiya
6	Dai Dei	Samba Uya Dei
7	Samba	Daliya Samba Uya
8		Deliya

Dialects

Kala is spoken in six villages along the Huon Gulf, and as such is split into different dialects. The most significant differences, which are phonological and lexical, exist between the northernmost three villages and the southernmost, however, differences also exist between the individual villages, especially for Manindala in the north. This dialect contains syllable codas, which no other dialect shows.