Mussau-Emira language

The Mussau-Emira language is spoken on the islands of Mussau and Emirau in the St [Matthias Islands] in the Bismarck Archipelago.

Phonology

Phonemes

Consonants

Mussau-Emira distinguishes the following consonants.

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal
Plosive
Fricative
Liquid

Fricative sounds may also be heard as voiced stop sounds in word-initial position and when geminated.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High
Mid
Low

Stress

In most words the primary stress falls on the penultimate vowel and secondary stresses fall on every second syllable preceding that. This is true of suffixed forms as well, as in níma 'hand', nimá-gi 'my hand'; níu 'coconut', niúna 'its coconut'.

Morphology

Pronouns and person markers

Subject prefixes

Prefixes mark the subjects of each verb: a-namanama 'I'm eating' u-namanama 'you're eating' e-namanama 'he's/she's eating'

Sample vocabulary

Numbers

kateva
galua
kotolu
gaata
galima
gaonomo
gaitu
gaoalu
kasio
kasaŋaulu