Mono-Alu language has been studied extensively by Joel L. Fagan,[2] a researcher for the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies at Australian National University. Their publication, "A Grammatical Analysis of Mono-Alu (Bougainville Straits, Solomon Islands),"[3] is one of the first and only translations and analysis of Mono-Alu language.
Fagan identified the Mono-Alu language as having twenty-eight phonemes. They are made up of nine diphthongs, and five vowels and fourteen consonants that make up the alphabet.
The Alu alphabet
The Alu alphabet has 19 letters: A B D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V.
Of these letters, D was seldom used instead of R for euphony's sake, but is used now in new foreign words or names introduced in the language. H generally (not always) is or can be replaced by F.
Pronunciation
Pronunciation of vowels
'a' is usually pronounced as in flat
a sometimes pronounced as in fast
'e' is always pronounced as in ten
'i' is always pronounced as in tin
'o' is always pronounced as in not
'u' is always pronounced as in put
Pronunciation of diphthongs
ai is pronounced "aye" - e.g. Galeai.
sometimes the letters are pronounced separately
ei has no equivalent sound in English.
oi is pronounced "oy" - e.g. ba-oi ('shark').
sometimes the letters are pronounced separately. - e.g. o-i-sa ('echo').
g is always pronounced as in Glas, giddy. Q is not used as is done elsewhere.[clarification needed] Here also, the words are written as they are pronounced – e.g. ang (instead of ag), ing, ong, ung. When, exceptionally, the n is after g as in gnora, owing to the nasal pronunciation, the accentuated n can be used as in Choiseul.
ng is pronounced as in English with the exception of uhg, the sound of u always being that of Latin.
ang is pronounced as in gang
ing is pronounced as in 'ring'
eng is pronounced as in 'length'
ong is pronounced as in 'wrong'
The other consonants have the same sounds as in English.
/u, i/ are heard as glides [w, j] within vowel environments.[4][3]
Numerals
The number system of Mono-Alu is very similar to other Austronesian languages.[5] For example, Mono-Alu shares the numbers 'two' (elua) and 'five' (lima) with the Hawaiian Polynesian language. A number for 'zero' was available in the language, but it was under the same use as the word 'nothing.' Fagan identified numbers from one to ten-thousand in Mono-Alu.
Mono-Alu also made[clarification needed] use of ordinal numbers. However, only 'first' (famma) is an actual word, where all other successive numbers are a grammatical construct.
Mono-Alu, like many other Austronesian languages, uses two separate pronouns for the first-person plural. One is inclusive, including the listener, and the other is exclusive, not including the listener. There are also no third-person pronouns available in the language. Fagan translated pronouns and their possessives.
added to the first of two names gives the meaning 'and', alternate form m
ua
denotes addition, 'and', 'with'
-a
'of', especially before -ang, alternate forms an, ang, aan
afa-
'what?'
-ata
often found after verbs and other words, alternate forms eta, ita, ota, uta
ga
particle, most often after the first word in a sentence, untranslatable; 'so, therefore' at the beginning of a sentence, also used with pronoun forms to emphasise them: gafa, gami, gai, gaina, gang, etc.
-nana
equivalent to copula, alternate form nina
-titi
strengthens the idea of repetition or duration
Mono-Alu grammar also follows rules of gender.
Nouns
Gender of nouns
There are two ways of indicating differences of gender:
^Meier, Sabrina C. (2020). Topics in the Grammar of Mono-Alu (Oceanic). University of Newcastle.
^Lincoln, Forster, Peter, Hilary (2001). Letters written in Mono-Alu language of Western District, Solomon Islands to Hilary Forster of N.Z.; Mono-Alu word list by Hilary Forster of N.Z. and a teacher from Shortland Islands, Solomon Islands. Shortlands, Solomon Islands.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Stolz, Thomas (1996). Some Instruments Are Really Good Companions - Some Are Not. On Syncretism and the Typology of Instrumentals and Comitatives. pp. Theoretical Linguistics 23. 113–200.