Santa Cruz language

Not to be confused with Santa Cruz Costanoan language or Santa Cruz Island Chumash.

The Santa Cruz language, locally known as Natqgu (new orthography) or Natügu (old orthography), is the main language spoken on the island of Nendö or 'Santa Cruz', in the Solomon Islands.

Santa Cruz
Natqgu Natügu
Native to	Solomon Islands
Region	Santa Cruz Islands, Eastern Solomons.
Native speakers	(5,900 cited 1999)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Temotu ? Reefs – Santa Cruz Santa Cruz
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: ntu – Natügu nlz – Nalögo npx – Noipx
Glottolog	natu1250
Coordinates: 10°40′S 165°50′E

A Natügu speaker, recorded in the Solomon Islands.

Name

The name Natügu means "our language" (natü "language, word" + -gu "1st + 2nd person plural suffix").

Genetic affiliation

Until the beginning of the 21st century, it was widely believed that Santa Cruz is a Papuan language. Like the rest of the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages, however, it was shown to be a member of the Austronesian language family in the 2000s.^[2]

Dialects

Dialects are Bënwë (Banua), Londai, Malo, Nea, Nooli. Speakers of most dialects understand Lwowa and Mbanua well. The Nea and Nooli dialects are the most divergent, actually a separate language (Nalögo).

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial			Alveolar			Palatal	Velar
		plain	round	pal.	plain	round	pal.		plain	round	pal.
Stop	voiceless	p	pʷ	pʲ	t	tʷ			k	kʷ	kʲ
	aspirated	pʰ			tʰ				kʰ
	voiced	b	bʷ	bʲ	d	dʷ			ɡ	ɡʷ
Nasal		m	mʷ		n		nʲ		ŋ	ŋʷ
Fricative		v			s
Approximant					l			j		w

Voiced stops can also be heard as prenasalized.^[3]

Vowels

Oral vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ʉ	u
Close-mid	e	ɵ	o
Near-open	æ	ə	ɔ
Open		a

Nasal vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close			ũ
Close-mid	ẽ	ɵ̃	õ
Near-open	æ̃	ə̃	ɔ̃
Open		ã

Orthography

The Santa Cruz language has two orthographies. The old orthography uses diacritics to mark vowel quality and nasalization while the new orthography uses no diacritics. The new orthography was developed in 1994, motivated by concerns about the difficulty of reading and typesetting the old orthography.^[4][5]

Consonants

Grapheme	Phoneme
b	/b/
d	/d/
g	/ɡ/
h[a]	—
j[b]	/dʒ/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
p	/p/
s	/s/
t	/t/
v	/β/
w	/w/
y	/j/

Vowels

Grapheme (old)	Grapheme (new)	Phoneme
a	a	/a/
e	e	/e/
i	i	/i/
o	o	/o/
u	u	/u/
â[c]	c	/ɔ/
ü	q	/ʉ/
ö	r[d]	/ɵ/
ä	x	/æ/
ë	z	/ə/

In the old orthography, nasal vowels are represented with a tilde over the vowel letter. In the new orthography, nasal vowels are represented with a straight apostrophe after the vowel letter.

• ^a The letter h is used only in English loanwords.
• ^b The letter j is used natively in one dialect, and otherwise only used in English loanwords.
• ^c The letter â was written o̲ in earlier versions of the old orthography.
• ^d The letter r is also used as a consonant in English loanwords.