Wutung language

Wutung (Udung), Musu, and Nyao, are dialects of a unnamed Skou language of Papua New Guinea. They are spoken in Bewani/Wutung Onei Rural LLG of Sandaun Province.

Wutung
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Sandaun Province
Ethnicity	580 inhabitants of Wutung village (2010)[1]
Native speakers	? (2010)[1]
Language family	Skou Western Wutung
Dialects	Wutung Musu Nyao Sangke?
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wut
Glottolog	wutu1244
ELP	Wutung
Coordinates: 2.60857°S 141.010203°E / -2.60857; 141.010203 (Wutung)
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Sangke and the language of several other villages of the interior are reported to be similar, and may be dialects.

Tok Pisin and English are widely spoken in the area, and many Wutung people speak Indonesian too.^[2][3]

Location

Wutung village (2.60857°S 141.010203°E / -2.60857; 141.010203 (Wutung)) is in Sandaun Province, on the northern coast and adjacent to the border with Indonesia. There are about 600 living in Wutung village, most of whom speak Wutung. Traditional Wutung land extends across the border to the Tami River, but while people garden plots in that expanse they all live in the village.

The nearby villages of Musu (12 km east on the coast, at 2.627641°S 141.10172°E / -2.627641; 141.10172 (Mushu)) and Nyao Kono (about 12 km due south, at 2.80788°S 141.054278°E / -2.80788; 141.054278 (Yaukono)) have closely related dialects which are named after their villages (Musu and Nyao). These three speech varieties are very closely related and are easily mutually intelligible.

Phonology

Wutung has fifteen consonants and seven vowels, six of which have nasal variants. This gives a total of 28 phonemes. Wutung also makes suprasegmental distinctions in tone.

Consonants

Wutung is one of the very few languages that lack velar consonants.

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Glottal
Plosive or Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	ʔ
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ
Nasal		m	n	ɲ
Fricative		f	s		h
Approximant		w	l

Vowels

Wutung has thirteen vowels, which includes seven oral and six nasal vowels. The table below shows the oral vowels. Each of these vowels, apart from the close-mid vowel ur /ɵ/, has an equivalent nasal vowel. The nasal vowels are indicated using the same symbol as the equivalent oral, but with a following ng, e.g. ca, 'pig' vs. cang 'blossom', the latter having the nasal vowel.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/		u /u/
Mid	ey /e/	ur /ɵ/	o /o/
Open	e /ɛ/		a /a/

Pronouns

Wutung has a simple system of personal pronouns with three persons (1st, 2nd and 3rd), two numbers (singular and plural) and gender in the third person singular pronouns. The same set of pronouns are used for object and subject.

I	nie	we	netu
thou	me	you	etu
he	qey	they	tetu
she	cey

External links

• Paradisec has an open access collection of Don Laycock’s materials that includes Zimakani language materials