Rotokas language

Rotokas is a language spoken in Bougainville, an island to the east of New Guinea, part of Papua New Guinea. It is part of the East Papuan language family. Its main claim to fame, linguistically speaking, is that it possesses one of the world's smallest phonemic inventories: 6 consonants (p t k v r g) and 5 vowels (a e i o u); the /t/ phoneme has the allophone [s] before /i/. Only Pirahã has fewer.

Thus, the Rotokas alphabet consists of the twelve letters AEIGKOPRSTUV.

Phonology

The phonemes of Rotokas, in SAMPA notation, are as follows:

Vowels A e i o u

In the orthography, v stands for SAMPA /B/, a voiced bilabial fricative, and r for SAMPA /4/.

Grammar

Rotokas normally uses Subject Object Verb word-order, with adjectives and demonstrative pronouns preceding the noun they modify, and most adverbs following the main verb. It uses postpositions.

Link

• at the Rosetta Project