Glottolog mudu1242 | Native speakers (8,800 cited 1991) ISO 639-3 wiv | |
Language family AustronesianMalayo-PolynesianOceanicMeso-MelanesianBali–VituVitu | ||
Vitu (also spelled Witu or Vittu) or Muduapa is an Oceanic language spoken by about 7,000 people on the islands northwest of the coast of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea.
Contents
Classification
Vitu is so closely related to the neighbouring Bali language that the two are sometimes considered to be a single language, called Bali–Vitu.
Vitu and Bali appear to be members of a Meso-Melanesian cluster of the Oceanic languages.
Consonants
/t/ is realized as [tʃ] before /i/.
/s/ occurs only in loanwords from Tok Pisin, such as sikul "school".
Phonotactics
No consonant clusters or final consonants are allowed in native Vitu words: all syllables have a CV or V structure. Loanwords, however, may have different structures.
Writing system
Vitu is written in the Latin script. Only between 15% and 25% of speakers of Vitu are literate in the language, but many more are literate in Tok Pisin, the national language of Papua New Guinea.
Morphology
Complex voice systems so characteristic of Austronesian languages of Taiwan and the Philippines undergo significant reduction in most Austronesian languages of Eastern Indonesia and Oceania. Vitu is unusual in terms of morphology when compared to most other Oceanic languages spoken in Melanesia. It is one of very few Melanesian languages that have a passive voice-marking system.
Syntax
The usual word order of Vitu is SVO.