Terei language

Terei
Buin
Region	Bougainville
Native speakers	27,000 (2003)
Language family	South Bougainville Buinic Buin Terei
Language codes
ISO 639-3	buo
Glottolog	tere1278

Terei or Buin, also known as Telei, Rugara, is the most populous Papuan language spoken to the east of New Guinea. There are about 27,000 speakers in the Buin District of Bougainville Province, Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

The phonology of the Buin language:

Consonant sounds

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Plosive	p	t	k g
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Liquid		ɾ (l)

The /ɡ/ sound does not occur word-initially and is often fricativised as [ɣ]. The phoneme /ɾ/ following an /n/ is pronounced as [d], and also occurs as [l] for an allophonic variant. When a /t/ sound occurs before an /i/, it is always pronounced as [tsi], and when occurring before a /u/ or /a/, it may be realized as [tsu] or [tsa] depending on the dialect.

Vowel sounds

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low	a

External links

• Paradisec has a number of collections with materials for Terei language two collections of Arthur Cappell's materials (AC1, AC2).