Iaai language
Iaai (Iaai pronunciation: in English as ) is a language of Ouvéa Island (New Caledonia). It shares the island of Ouvéa with Fagauvea, a Polynesian outlier language. Iaai is the sixth-most-spoken language of New Caledonia, with 4078 speakers as of 2009. It is taught in schools in an effort to preserve it. The language has been studied by linguists Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre and Anne-Laure Dotte. Phonology Iaai is remarkable for its large inventory of unusual phonemes, in particular its consonants, with a rich variety of voiceless nasals and approximants. Vowels Iaai has ten vowel qualities, all of which may occur long and short. There is little difference in quality depending on length. Iaai constitutes one of the few cases of front rounded vowels attested outside of their geographic stronghold in Eurasia, even if other cases have since been reported in the Oceanic family. The vowel is only known to occur in a half a dozen words. In all of these but "dedicate", it appears between a labial (b, m) and velar (k, ŋ) consonant. After the non-labiovelarized labial consonants and the vowel , the vowel is pronounced . The open vowels only contrast in a few environments. only occurs after the