Wena

Wena (also known as Hibu, Hibuese, Mannenese or Nenge) is a language isolate spoken by around 60,000 people on the Hibu Islands in the Hibu Province of Papua New Guinea. It is called by its speakers either nenge wena or nenge wana, both essentially meaning 'our language', the former using the exclusive word 'we, not you' and the latter using the inclusive word 'we, including you'. The closest land to the Hibu Islands is Simberi Island about 150 kilometres to the southwest. Nuguria Atoll is a similar distance away to the southeast. About half of the Wena people are monolingual, the other half also having knowledge of Tok Pisin and a much smaller percentage know English. Dialectal differences are little-documented and appear to be small, most likely owing to the high degree of travel around the island.

Wena appears to be a language isolate. It is a right-branching, strongly isolating language, notable for its largely oligoanalytic nature, its complete lack of verbs other than the non-inflecting copula i, and for its sex-based speech registers, whereby initiated men pronounce all consonants other than /h/ as voiced.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plain plosive	b 1		d 1, 2, 4		g 1	( ʔ ) 6
Prenasalised plosive	mb 1, 3		nd 1, 3, 4		ŋg 1, 3
Nasal	m		n 4		ŋ
Fricative		v 1	z 1, 4	( ʒ ) 1, 4		h 4, 5
Affricate				( d͡ʒ ) 1, 4
Prenasalised affricate				( nd͡ʒ ) 1, 4
Lateral			l 4
Approximant	w5			j 4

• ¹ The plain plosives /b d g/, the prenasalised plosives /^mb ⁿd ^ŋg/ and the non-glottal fricatives /v z/ are pronounced voicelessly in a register called nenge la, which is spoken by most speakers: [p t k], [^mp ⁿt ^ŋk], [f s]. The voiced pronunciation is only used in a register called nenge hu, which is only spoken by men who have passed initiation. The early missionaries who first described and wrote down the language were only allowed contact with initiated men, which is why the voiced allophones, although used by less than half of the speakers, are traditionally used to describe these phonemes.
• ² In nenge hu, /d/ is frequently pronounced as a tap or flap [ɾ] when before an unstressed vowel.
• ³ Post pausa, the prenasalised plosives /^mb ⁿd ^ŋg/ are preceded by a syllabic nasal [m̩.p n̩.t ŋ̩.k] or [m̩.b n̩.d ŋ̩.g]. When immediately following a vowel, the nasalised onset can phonetically be regarded as belonging to the previous syllable Some speakers of nenge hu, pronounce the prenasalised plosives in all positions as geminate nasals [mː nː ŋː]. This same tendency in nenge la retains the lack of voicing during the release into the vowel, causing these to sound like [mh nh ŋh].
• ⁴ /j/ has a palatalising effect on preceding consonants, especially alveolar consonants and /h/. The sequence /hj/ is pronounced [ç]. The sequences /dj ⁿdj nj zj lj/ generally end up pronounced towards [t͡ɕ~d͡ʒ ⁿt͡ɕ~d͡ʒ ɲ ɕ~ʒ ʎ]. This effect on obstruents tends to be stronger in nenge hu, resulting in postalveolar [d͡ʒ ⁿd͡ʒ ʒ] whereas nenge la tends to use palatalised [t͡ɕ ⁿt͡ɕ ɕ] or [t͡sʲ ⁿt͡sʲ sʲ]. Three additional phonemes */d͡ʒ ⁿd͡ʒ ʒ/ are sometimes suggested in order to explain the presence of a contrast between plain and palatalised pronunciations of /d ⁿd z/ before /i/, while the sequence /ji/ is elswhere prohobited. Analyses that do not posit these extra phonemes simply allow /ji/ to appear in this location.
• ⁵ /w/ has a labialising effect on preceding consonants, with /hw/ most notably being pronounced [ʍ].
• ⁶ The glottal stop [ʔ] can appear any time two vowels are adjacent to each other. This is most common between two identical vowels and more frequent in clear speech but there is a large degree of variation. Because its possible distribution is predicted by the distribution of vowels and is non-contrastive, the glottal stop is not phonemic.

Consonant Spelling

The consonants are written using their phonemic representations in IPA with the exception of the prenasalised plosives /^mb ⁿd ^ŋg/, written mb, nd and ngg respectively, /ŋ/, written ng and /j/ written y. The letter r is used in some texts to indicate where the tapped or flapped allophone of /d/ appears. This is not consistent, although the Wena bible uses this and many names are spelled this way.

The following table shows the basic pronunciation of each written letter or letter combination.

Writing	Nenge La	Nenge Hu
b	[p]	[b]
bw	[pw]	[bw]
by	[pj]	[bj]
d	[t]	[d]~[ɾ]
dw	[tw]	[dw]
dy	[t͡ɕ]~[tsj]	[d͡ʒ]
g	[k]	[g]
gw	[kw]	[gw]
gy	[kj]	[gj]
h	[h]	[h]
hw	[ʍ]	[ʍ]
hy	[ç]	[ç]
l	[l]	[l]
lw	[lw]	[lw]
ly	[ʎ]	[ʎ]
m	[m]	[m]
mb	[mp]~[mh]	[mb]~[mː]
mbw	[mpw]~[mʍ]	[mbw]~[mːw]
mby	[mpj]~[mç]	[mbj]~[mːj]
mw	[mw]	[mw]
my	[mw]	[mw]
n	[n]	[n]
nd	[nt]~[nh]	[nd]~[nː]
ndw	[ntw]~[nʍ]	[ndw]~[nːw]
ndy	[nt͡ɕ]~[ntsj]	[nd͡ʒ]
ng	[ŋ]	[ŋ]
ngg	[ŋk]~[ŋh]	[ŋg]~[ŋː]
nggw	[ŋkw]~[ŋʍ]	[ŋgw]~[ŋːw]
nggy	[ŋkj]~[ŋç]	[ŋgj]~[ŋːj]
ngw	[ŋw]	[ŋw]
ngy	[ŋj]	[ŋj]
nw	[nw]	[nw]
ny	[ɲ]	[ɲ]
r	[t]	[ɾ]
v	[f]	[v]
vw	[fw]	[vw]
vy	[fj]	[vj]
w	[w]	[w]
y	[j]	[j]
z	[s]	[z]
zw	[sw]	[zw]
zy	[ɕ]~[sj]	[ʒ]