Kivatu

Kivatu
Kiuatou
vatu k’vatu
Pronunciation	[w̥atu kʼw̥atu]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Native to	Kivatu Archipelago
Ethnicity	K’wa, Kokosi and Kikiñ peoples
Native speakers	~70,000 (2024) ~31,850 K’wa ~21,980 Kokosi ~15,890 Kikiñ ~280 other
Language family	language isolate Kivatu
Writing system	Latin

Kivatu(vatu k’vatu, pronounced: [w̥atu kʼw̥atu]), also called Kiuatou, is a language isolate spoken natively in the Kivatu Archipelago by the K’wa, Kokosi and Kikiñ people in order of population. There are a total of about 70,000 native speakers of Kivatu, with 45.5% being ethnically K’wa, 31.4% being Kokosi, 22.7% being Kikiñ and the remaining 0.4% being other unspecified ethnicities.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Coronal	Velar	Palatal
Plosive	pulmonic	p b	t d	k g
	ejective	pʼ bʼ	tʼ dʼ	kʼ
Nasal		m̥ m	n̥ n	(ŋ)	ɲ
Trill			r
Fricative	pulmonic	ɸ~f	s z		ç
	palatalised		sʲ zʲ
(Lateral) Approximant			l	w̥ w	j̥ j

Voiceless consonants

Kivatu has more voiceless consonants than other languages. In particular, voiceless nasals(/m̥/ and /n̥/) and voiceless approximants(/w̥/ and /j̥/) are common in the language. Of these abnormal voiceless consonants, /w̥/ is the most common across most vocabulary, and thus has its own letter, ⟨v⟩, while the other voiceless consonants simply use the letter for their more common voiced counterpart, with a ⟨’⟩ added, e.g. j [j] and j’ [j̥].

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ʉ~u
Close-mid	e		o~o̞
Open	a		ɑ

Phonotactics

All CV and V syllables are possible in Kivatu, though VC syllables do appear sometimes in some loanwords, like b’ataŋ, "baseball bat", from Indonesian batang, or robok, "robot", from English robot.