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Marovo is an Austronesian language of the Solomon Islands. It is spoken in the New Georgia Group on islands in Marovo Lagoon and on the neighbouring islands of New Georgia, Vangunu and Nggatokae. The usual word order in sentences is verb–subject–object.

Names for local fauna are similar to but still much distinct from those in Roviana (and presumably other New Georgia languages).

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k
	prenasal	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᶮdʒ	ᵑɡ
Fricative		β	s		ɣ
Lateral			l
Tap			ɾ

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Vowel length is also distinctive.

Footnotes

1. Marovo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Read & Moseby (2006)
3. Hviding, Edvard (1996). Guardians of Marovo Lagoon: Practice, Place, and Politics in Maritime Melanesia. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press. pp. xxvii–xxix.

References

• Read, John L.; Moseby, Katherine (2006). "Vertebrates of Tetepare Island, Solomon Islands". Pacific Science. 60 (1): 69–79. doi:10.1353/psc.2005.0060. hdl:10125/22548. S2CID 36048427.

External links

• Materials on Marovo are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections (AC1 and AC2) held by Paradisec

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• Languages of the Solomon Islands
• Northwest Solomonic languages
• Western Oceanic language stubs