Mountain Koiali language

Mountain Koiari
Region	Oro Province, Papua New Guinea
Ethnicity	Koiari people
Native speakers	(Mountain Koiari: 4,000? cited 2000 census) [1] Biage: 1,100
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Koiarian Koiaric Mountain Koiari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: kpx  – Mountain Koiali bdf  – Biage
Glottolog	moun1252   Mountain Koiali

Mountain Koiari (Koiali) is a language of Oro Province and Central Province, Papua New Guinea. It is not very similar to the other language which shares its name, Grass Koiari. Half of its speakers are monolingual.

It is spoken in Barai, Efogi ( 9°09′22″S147°39′56″E / 9.156234°S 147.665661°E / -9.156234; 147.665661 (Efogi No. 1) ), and Koiari villages of Koiari Rural LLG, as well as in Hiri Rural LLG. ^{[2] [3]}

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Plosive	b	t d	k ɡ
Fricative	ɸ	s	x
Nasal	m	n
Approximant		l

• Sounds /ɸ, x/ can also be voiced as [β, ɣ] in word-medial position.
• Sounds /t, l/ can also be lenited as [ɾ, z] in word-medial position. ^[4]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

References

1. Mountain Koiali at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
   Biage at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2019). "Papua New Guinea languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (22nd ed.). Dallas: SIL International.
3. United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
4. Garland, Roger & Susan (1975). A grammar sketch of Mountain Koiali. In Tom E. Dutton (ed.), Studies in languages of central and south-east Papua: Canberra: Australian National University. pp. 413–470.