ÃÂiwoo ( ) is an Oceanic language spoken on the Santa Cruz Islands and the Reef Islands in the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands.
The ÃÂiwoo language has been known under many names in the literature, including: Aà ·iwo, Ayiwo, Aïwo, Gnivo, Lanlom, Lomlom, Naaude, Nifilole, Nivo, Reef Islands, and Reefs.
ÃÂiwoo has roughly 8,400 native speakers with roughly 5,000âÂÂ6,000 of these living on the Reef islands and the rest living on the Santa Cruz islands. As such, ÃÂiwoo is the largest of the Reef Islands â Santa Cruz languages. Most speakers live on the Ngawa and Ngäsinue islands in the Reef Islands; others live in some villages on Vanikoro or on Nendö, like Kala Bay. Finally, some communities have recently been established in the capital Honiara, notably in the White River district.
On the Reef islands, ÃÂiwoo is the primary language spoken by all of its people. Most of them also speak Pijin, the lingua franca of the Solomon Islands, while only a few people also speak English. The schooling system uses ÃÂiwoo on the primary and secondary school level, though a standardized orthography for ÃÂiwoo has not yet been adopted, resulting in a decline of people who can read and write.
ÃÂiwoo uses a variation of the Latin alphabet. The following spelling conventions are taken from Næssâ dictionary of ÃÂiwoo.
Nouns are used to describe a person, place or thing. Nouns in ÃÂiwoo can be paired with a suffix to show a possessive case. An example of this is tumo 'my father'. Other nouns in ÃÂiwoo can be followed by a possessive particle, as in kuli nou 'my dog'.
Bound nouns are one subtype of nouns; they act like nouns but cannot be used by themselves and need to be paired with a verb, possessive case, or another noun instead.
Local nouns are another subtype of nouns, but are not like regular nouns because they can be used to indicate location without a preposition.
Verbs in ÃÂiwoo are divided into three different classes: intransitive verbs, A-verbs, and O-verbs.
These combine only with one noun or pronoun to form a sentence but also take a prefix to indicate an action.
Similarly to intransitive verbs, A-verbs take a prefix to indicate an action; however, they combine with another noun or pronoun.
Different from intransitive verbs, O-verbs take suffixes to say who is performing the action with the noun and pronoun.
There are no verbs that start with the sounds a, ä, â, or o. The majority of verbs in ÃÂiwoo begin with the phoneme /e/ followed by a vowel, as e.g. eâmoli âÂÂto lookâÂÂ.
Verbs beginning with the phonemes /v/ and /w/ are defined as causative verbs. Causative verbs are made by combining a causative prefix to the letters /v/ and /w/. In the ÃÂiwoo language, the two causative prefixes are wâ- and vä-.
In the ÃÂiwoo language, ngä and go are two important prepositions. ngä translates to 'in, at, on, to, from', while go corresponds to 'for, with, because of'.
Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns. An example of a pronoun is iu âÂÂIâÂÂ.
Possessive markers are used after a noun to show the possessor of a person, place or thing.
Similarly to possessive markers, relational markers are used to show relations between a noun and something else.
ÃÂiwoo demonstrative can cover several syntactic functions, but all share the property of distinguishing between a âÂÂhere, close byâ and a âÂÂthere, far awayâ form.
Conjunctions are used to link together phrases or clauses.
Quantifiers are words that are used to show quantity.
Interjections are adjectives that are used by themselves without the need of other descriptive words.
In the ÃÂiwoo language, lu- and li- are closely related to the verb stem and are thus the oldest subject prefixes still used. The other subject prefixes that follow after lu- and li- are newer, created other syntactic roles. However, one exclusion to the list of new subject prefixes are with i.
Transitive subject forms are suffixed. In addition, transitive subject forms have possessive-like forms.
There are eight different nominalizing prefixes that are combined with a verb to create a noun which describes a person, thing, or place. These prefixes are:
In the ÃÂiwoo language, class prefixes are combined with a noun or verb.
ÃÂiwoo gender marking prefixes can be traced back to their Oceanic origin. To create a gender marking prefix, gi- and si- from the nominalizing prefixes are combined with nouns.
The ÃÂiwoo language follows the word order OVS or Object-Verb-Subject.
In ÃÂiwoo, three different verbal clauses are distinguished: intransitive, transitive, and semitransitive. The main difference between these three verbal clauses is that intransitives concern only one person while transitives and semitransitives concern more than one person.
In Oceanic languages, intransitive clauses follow the subject and verb format. Transitive clauses follow the order object, verb, subject. Semitransitive clauses use intransitive verbs with subject and object, resulting in a structured phrase order of subject, verb, object.