Huli is a Tari language spoken by the Huli people of the Hela Province of Papua New Guinea. It has a pentadecimal (base-15) numeral system: ngui means 15, ngui ki means 15×2 = 30, and ngui ngui means 15×15 = 225.
Huli | |
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![]() Huli Wigman from Hela Province of Papua New Guinea | |
Region | Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea |
Ethnicity | Huli people |
Native speakers | 150,000 (2011)[1] |
Language family | Trans-New Guinea?
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Writing system | Latin script (Huli alphabet) Huli Braille |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | hui |
Glottolog | huli1244 |
Huli has a pandanus language called tayenda tu ha illili (bush divide taboo) used for collecting karuka nuts (anga) as well as hunting or traveling.[2] Tayenda is used to evade malevolent bush spirits.[2] The grammar for Tayenda is nearly identical to normal Huli, but the vocabulary is changed, often borrowing words from Duna but with changed meanings.[2]
Huli has a syllable structure of (C)V.
Front | Back | |
---|---|---|
Close | i ĩ | u ũ |
Mid | e ẽ | o õ |
Open | ɑ ɑ̃ |
/ɑ/ is pronounced more fronted as [æ] before /r/ and /ʝ/.[3]
Vowel nasality is phonemic in the language. Vowels can also carry three phonemic tones; high-falling, mid-level, and low-rising.
Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
voiced | b | d | g | ||||
prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | ||||
Fricative | ʝ | h | |||||
Approximant | w | ɭ | |||||
Trill | r |
Stops /p t k/ can become aspirated as [pʰ tʰ kʰ].
Many speakers pronounce /t/ as [s] before /i/.
/d/ is realized as voiceless as [d̥] when occurring word-initially, and is palatalized as [dʲ] between /i/ and a word-final /ɑ/.
/r/ only occurs word-medially.
/b ɡ/ can be phonetically realized as fricatives intervocalically as [β ɣ].
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Other Papuan languages |
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Sign languages |