Motu language
Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea
title: "Motu language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["central-papuan-tip-languages", "languages-of-central-province-(papua-new-guinea)"] description: "Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motu_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Motu |
| altname | Pure Motu, True Motu |
| states | Papua New Guinea |
| region | Central Province |
| ethnicity | Motuan |
| speakers | 39,000 |
| date | 2008 |
| ref | e18 |
| familycolor | Austronesian |
| fam2 | Malayo-Polynesian |
| fam3 | Oceanic |
| fam4 | Western Oceanic |
| fam5 | Papuan Tip |
| fam6 | Central |
| fam7 | West |
| script | Latin script (Motu alphabet) |
| Motu Braille | |
| iso3 | meu |
| glotto | motu1246 |
| glottorefname | Motu |
| :: |
|name=Motu |altname=Pure Motu, True Motu |states=Papua New Guinea |region=Central Province |ethnicity=Motuan |speakers=39,000 |date=2008 |ref=e18 |familycolor=Austronesian |fam2=Malayo-Polynesian |fam3=Oceanic |fam4=Western Oceanic |fam5=Papuan Tip |fam6=Central |fam7=West |script=Latin script (Motu alphabet) Motu Braille |iso3=meu |glotto=motu1246 |glottorefname=Motu
Motu (sometimes called Pure Motu or True Motu to distinguish it from Hiri Motu) is a Central Papuan Tip language that is spoken by the Motuans, an indigenous ethnic group of Papua New Guinea. It is commonly used today in the region, particularly around the capital, Port Moresby.
A simplified form of Motu developed as a trade language in the Papuan region, in the southeast of the main island of New Guinea, originally known as Police Motu, and today known as Hiri Motu. After Tok Pisin and English, Hiri Motu was at the time of independence the third most commonly spoken of the more than 800 languages of Papua New Guinea, although its use has been declining for some years, mainly in favour of Tok Pisin.
Motu is classified as one of the Malayo-Polynesian languages and bears some linguistic similarities to Polynesian and Micronesian languages.
Phonology
Motu is a typical Austronesian language in that it is heavily vowel-based. Every Motu syllable ends in a vowel sound — this may be preceded by a single consonant (there are no "consonant clusters"). Vowel sounds may be either monophthongs (consisting of a single basic sound) or diphthongs (consisting of more than one basic sound).
There are only five vowel sounds ; Motu diphthongs are written and pronounced as combinations of two vowels. The sounds oi and oe, ai and ae, au and ao (approximately like English boy, high, cow), and r and l are distinguished in Motu but not in Hiri Motu. There is no letter f; when it occurs in loan words, it is usually represented as p.
::data[format=table title=""]
| Labial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | plain | labialized | Stop | voiceless | voiced | Fricative | Nasal | Approximant | Flap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
- Taylor (1970) claims that the velar stops and fricative are advanced before front vowels or retracted before back vowels.
BrailleMotu Braille has the usual letter assignments apart from ḡ, which is .
Notes
References
References
- Unesco reports the language as simply "Motu", but ''Ethnologue'' 17 only notes braille usage for Hiri Motu. However, Hiri Motu does not have the letter ḡ.
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::