DOBU LANGUAGE

Dobu
Dobu
Dobuan
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Milne Bay Province, tip of Cape Vogel
Native speakers	(10,000 cited 1998); 60% monolingual; L2 speakers: 51,000 (2021)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Oceanic Papuan Tip Nuclear Papuan Tip North Papuan Mainland – D'Entrecasteaux Dobu–Duau Dobu; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin script (Dobuan alphabet); Dobuan Braille
Language codes
ISO 639-3	dob
Glottolog	dobu1241

Dobu or Dobuan is an Austronesian language spoken in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. It is a lingua franca for 100,000 people in D'Entrecasteaux Islands.

Phonology

		Labial		Alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
		plain	lab.	Alveolar	Palatal	plain	lab.	plain	lab.
Plosive	voiceless	p	pʷ	t		k	kʷ	ʔ	ʔʷ
Plosive	voiced	b	bʷ	d		ɡ	ɡʷ
Fricative				s
Nasal		m	mʷ	n
Flap				ɺ
Approximant					j	w

Sounds /p, t, k/ may also be aspirated in free variation as [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] in all environments.
The lateral flap /ɺ/ may fluctuate with an alveolar vibrant flap [ɾ] depending on the dialect of the speaker.
/j/ may also fluctuate with a fricative [ʝ] within vocabulary.

/a/ may be heard as [ʌ] in unstressed syllables.
/ɔ/ may be heard as slightly more centralized [ɔ̽] when following labialized consonants in unstressed positions.
/u/ may be heard as [ʊ] in unstressed syllables.^[2]

An open access collection of singing in Dobu is available through Paradisec.
Historical open access collections of recordings in Dobu are available through Paradisec, including the Malcome Ross collection ( MR1) and two Arthur Campbell collections ( AC1 and AC2)

^ ^a ^b ^c Dobu at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
^ Lithgow, Daphne (1977). Dobu phonemics. Phonologies of Five P.N.G. languages: Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics. pp. 73–96.

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