The Iaai language is a language of Ouvéa Island, New Caledonia. Although it had only 1,500 speakers as of 1996, it is becoming taught in schools in New Caledonia in an effort to preserve it.

Iaai is remarkable for its large inventory of unusual phonemes, which include the most convincing evidence for front rounded vowels occurring outside of their stronghold in Eurasia north of the Himalayas. It also has an unusually rich variety of nasals, including voiceless ones, and for the presence of coarticulated labial-velar phonemes, including a voiceless labial-velar and retroflex nasals which it may be the only language in the world to possess.

Given its presence near the only Polynesian languages spoken in New Caledonia - Polynesian languages being known for small phoneme inventories - Iaai's large phoneme inventory seems very surprising and the explanation for the unusual phonemes of many Kanak languages still is not known.

Vowels

Consonants

References