Marovo language

Marovo
Marovo
Region	Solomon Islands
Native speakers	(8,100 cited 1999)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Northwest Solomonic New Georgia – Ysabel New Georgia Marovo; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mvo
Glottolog	maro1244

Marovo is an Austronesian language of the Solomon Islands. It is spoken in the New Georgia Group on islands in Marovo Lagoon and on the neighbouring islands of New Georgia, Vangunu and Nggatokae. The usual word order in sentences is verb–subject–object.

Names for local fauna are similar to but still much distinct from those in Roviana (and presumably other New Georgia languages).^[2]

Phonology

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k
Stop/ Affricate	prenasal	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᶮdʒ	ᵑɡ
Fricative		β	s		ɣ
Lateral			l
Tap			ɾ

Vowel length is also distinctive.^[3]

^ Marovo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Read & Moseby (2006)
^ Hviding, Edvard (1996). Guardians of Marovo Lagoon: Practice, Place, and Politics in Maritime Melanesia. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press. pp. xxvii–xxix.

Read, John L.; Moseby, Katherine (2006). "Vertebrates of Tetepare Island, Solomon Islands". Pacific Science. 60 (1): 69–79. doi:10.1353/psc.2005.0060. hdl:10125/22548. S2CID 36048427.

Materials on Marovo are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections (AC1 and AC2) held by Paradisec

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