Santa Cruz language



The Santa Cruz language, locally known as Natqgu (new orthography) or Natügu (old orthography), is the main language spoken on the island of Nendö or 'Santa Cruz', in the Solomon Islands.

Name
The name Natügu means "our language" (natü "language, word" + -gu "1st + 2nd person plural suffix").

Genetic affiliation
It was widely believed until recently that Santa Cruz was a Papuan language. Like the rest of the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages, however, it has been shown to be a member of the Austronesian language family.

Dialects
Dialects are Bënwë (Banua), Londai, Malo, Nea, Nooli. Speakers of most dialects understand Lwowa and Mbanua well. The Nea and Nooli dialects are the most divergent, actually a separate language (Nalögo).

Consonants
Voiced stops can also be heard as prenasalized.

Orthography
The Santa Cruz language has two orthographies. The old orthography uses diacritics to mark vowel quality and nasalization while the new orthography uses no diacritics. The new orthography was developed in 1994, motivated by concerns about the difficulty of reading and typesetting the old orthography.

In the old orthography, nasal vowels are represented with a tilde over the vowel letter. In the new orthography, nasal vowels are represented with a straight apostrophe after the vowel letter.


 * The letter h is used only in English loanwords.
 * The letter j is used natively in one dialect, and otherwise only used in English loanwords.
 * The letter â was written o̲ in earlier versions of the old orthography.
 * The letter r is also used as a consonant in English loanwords.