Nakanai language

Nakanai
Lakalai
Spoken in	Papua New Guinea
Native speakers	13,000
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Oceanic Willaumez Nakanai
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nak

The Nakanai language is spoken by the Nakanai tribe in West New Britain, a province of Papua New Guinea. It is an Austronesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup.

The name Nakanai is natively pronounced Lakalai, as the alveolar nasal [n] has disappeared from the phonemic inventory of the language and has been replaced by [l].

Phonology

Nakanai syllables may be of the shape V or CV, with no codas or consonant clusters to be found anywhere in the language.

References

• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.
• Johnston, Raymond Leslie. 1980. Nakanai of New Britain: The Grammar of an Oceanic Language. Pacific Linguistics: Series B-70.
• Spaelti, Philip. 1997. Dimensions of Variation in Multi-Pattern Reduplication. Doctoral Dissertation: University of California, Santa Cruz.