# Mono-Alu language

Mono, or Alu, is an Oceanic language of the Solomon Islands reported to be spoken by 660 people on Treasury Island (Mono proper), 2,270 on Shortland Island (Alu dialect), and 14 on Fauro Island in 1999.

## Phonology

The Mono-Alu language has been studied extensively by Joel L. Fagan, a researcher for the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. His publication, "A Grammatical Analysis of Mono-Alu (Bougainville Straits, Solomon Islands)," is one of the first and only translations and analyses of Mono-Alu language.
Fagan identified the Mono-Alu language as having twenty-eight phonemes. They are made up of nine diphthongs, 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, and 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 can sometimes be replaced by F.

#### Pronunciation
##### Pronunciation of vowels

* 'a' is usually pronounced as in flat
** 'a' is 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').
* ui used as a diphthong - e.g. sui-o ('swallow')
** used separately - e.g. ku-i ('baby') with the exception

##### Pronunciation of consonants

* g is always pronounced as in glass, giddy. Q is not used as is done elsewhere. 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.
| | Labial | Coronal | Velar | Glottal |
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |
| Plosive | p b | t | k g | ʔ |
| Fricative | | s | | h |
| Tap | | ɾ | | |
| Approximant | (w) | l | (j) | |
* /b/ can also be heard as fricatives [β, v] under certain conditions.
* /ɡ/ can be heard as [ɣ] in free variation.
* /ɾ/ can also be heard as [d] in free variation within word-initial position, or as [dɾ] when following a nasal.
| | Front | Central | Back |
| High | i | | u |
| Mid | ɛ | | ɔ |
| Low | | ɐ | |
* /u, i/ are heard as glides [w, j] within vowel environments.

## Numerals

The number system of Mono-Alu is very similar to other Austronesian languages. For example, Mono-Alu shares the numbers 'two' (elua) and 'five' (lima) with the Hawaiian 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.
| Cardinal | English |
| Menna | nothing |
| Kala (or elea) | one |
| Elua | two |
| Episa | three |
| Ehati | four |
| Lima | five |
| Onomo | six |
| Hitu | seven |
| Alu | eight |
| Ulia | nine |
| Lafulu | ten |
| Lafulu rohona elea | eleven |
| Lafulu rohona elua | twelve |
| Lafulu rohona episa | thirteen |
| Lafulu rohona efati | fourteen |
| Lafulu rohona lima | fifteen |
| Lafulu rohona onomo | sixteen |
| Lafulu rohona hitu | seventeen |
| Lafulu rohona alu | eighteen |
| Lafulu rohona ulia | nineteen |
| Elua lafulu (or Tanaoge) | twenty |
| Episa lafulu (or Pisafulu) | thirty |
| Efati lafulu (or Fatiafulu) | forty |
| Lima lafulu (or limafulu) | fifty |
| Onomo lafulu | sixty |
| Fitu lafulu | seventy |
| Alu lafulu | eighty |
| Ulia lafulu (or Siafulu) | ninety |
| Ea latuu | one-hundred |
| Elua latuu | two-hundred |
| Ea kokolei | one-thousand |
| Elua kokolei | two-thousand |
| Lafulu kokolei | ten-thousand |
Mono-Alu also made use of ordinal numbers. However, only 'first' (famma) is an actual word, where all other successive numbers are a grammatical construct.
| Ordinal | English |
| famma | first |
| Fa-elua-naang | second |
| Fa-epis-naana | third |
| Fa-ehati-naana | fourth |
| Fa-lima-naana | fifth |
| Fa-onomo-naana | sixth |
| Fa-hitu-naana | seventh |
| Fa-alu-naana | eighth |
| Fa-ulia-naana | ninth |
| Fa-lafulu-naana | tenth |

## Grammar
### Pronouns

Mono-Alu, like many other Austronesian languages, uses two separate pronouns for the first-person plural in order to express clusivity - that is, one first person plural pronoun is inclusive (including the listener), and the other is exclusive (not including the listener). Mono-Alu does not have third person pronouns. Fagan translated pronouns and their possessives.
| | | | Pronoun | Obj | Suffix | Other |
| 1st person | singular | singular | mafa | -afa | -gu | sagu |
| 1st person | plural | exclusive | mani | -ami | -mang, -ma | samang/sama |
| 1st person | plural | inclusive | maita | -ita | -ra | sara |
| 2nd person | singular | singular | maito | -o | -ng | sang |
| 2nd person | plural | plural | maang | -ang | -mia | samia |
| 3rd person | singular | singular | --- | -i, -ng | -na | sana |
| 3rd person | plural | plural | --- | -ri, -iri | -ria | saria |

### Affixes

Mono-Alu is very specific regarding adverbs and other verb affixes. Verbs can be altered with a prefix, infix, and a suffix.
| Prefixes | | Infixes | | Suffixes | |
| ang | relative prefix, alternate forms an, ai, a'nta | fa | infix denoting completion | ai | there, away |
| fa | causative prefix, fa becomes f before a, alternate form ha | fang | one another (reciprocal infix), alternate form fan | ma | hither, thither, alternate form ama |
| ta | infix or prefix showing action or state. | fero | elsewhere, to somewhere else | | |
| | | isa | together, at the same time, alternate sa | | |
| | | male | again (also occurs independently) | | |
| | | mea | makes a plural | | |
| | | meka | till tired, for a very long time, alternate form meko | | |
| a | place where or whither, alternate form ang occurs after a |
| ng | 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 |

### Grammatical gender

There are two ways of indicating differences of grammatical gender:
* By different words: - e.g.
** Tiong 'man' – Betafa 'woman'
** Fanua 'men' – Talaiva 'women'
** Lalaafa 'headman' – Mamaefa 'headwoman'
** Tua-na 'his grandfather' – Tete-na 'his grandmother'
** Kanega 'old man' (husband) – Magota 'old woman' (wife)
* By using an ord indicative of sex: – e.g.
** Kui manuale 'baby' (male) – Kui batafa 'baby' (female)
** Boo sule 'boar' – Boo tuaru 'sow' (sule and tuaru are used for animals only)
In other cases, there is no distinction between masculine, feminine, and neuter.

### Adverbs

Some exceptions within the rules of Mono-Alu have been discovered.
Two adverbs of place, instead of being written with a double consonant, are written with one only accentuated.
* e.g. Nai (instead of NNai) – 'here'
* 'Nao (instead of NNao) – 'there'
Instead of the aspirate h, the letter f can be used:
* in verbs preceded by the causative ha (or fa)
** e.g. fasoku (or hasoku) – 'let come'
* in verbs preceded by the prefix han (or fan) meaning reciprocity or duality
** e.g. fanua (or hanua) - 'mon'
** mafa (or maha) - 'I, no'

#### Articles

There is no definite article in Alu. The number elea ('one') is used as an indefinite article.