Lo-Toga language
Encyclopedia
Situation and dialects
Its 580 speakers live mostly in LoLo (island)
Lo is an island of the Torres group of islands, in northern Vanuatu.The 210 inhabitants of Lo live in two villages: Lungharegi and Rinuhe. They speak the Lo dialect of the Lo-Toga language.-Notes:...
and Toga, the two main islands in the southern half of the Torres group. The same language is also spoken by the small populations of the two other islands of Linua and Tegua.
Lo-Toga is itself divided into two very close dialects, Lo (spoken on Lo island) and Toga (spoken on Toga). The name Toga has been used sometimes to refer to the whole language of Lo-Toga.
Conversely, Lo-Toga is a distinct language from the other language of the Torres group, Hiw
Hiw language
Hiw is an Oceanic language spoken on Hiw island, in the Torres islands of Vanuatu.It is distinct from Lo-Toga, the other language of the Torres group.-Phonology:Hiw has 9 phonemic vowels...
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Phonology
The Lo dialect of Lo-Toga has 13 phonemicPhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
vowels. These include 8 monophthong
Monophthong
A monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
s /i e ɛ a ə ɔ o ʉ/, and five diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s /i͡e i͡ɛ i͡a o͡ə o͡ɔ/.