Rotokas alphabet

The modern Rotokas alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of only 12 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet without diacritics:[1]

Uppercase Forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A E G I K O P R S T U V
Lowercase Forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a e g i k o p r s t u v

It is the smallest alphabet in use today[citation needed]. The majority of the Rotokas people are literate in their language. In the Rotokas writing system the vowel letters have their IPA values, though they may be written double, aa, ee, ii, oo, uu, for long vowels. The consonant letters have the following values:

  • G: [ɡ] or [ɣ]
  • K: [k]
  • P: [p]
  • R: [d], [ɾ] or [l]
  • S: [ts] or [s] (only occurs before I and in the name Rotokas)
  • T: [t] (never occurs before I)
  • V: [b] or [β]

Here is a sample of written Rotokas:

Osireitoarei avukava iava ururupavira toupasiveira.
"The old woman's eyes are shut."
  1. ^ Robinson, Stuart (2006). "Inventory of the Aita Dialect of Rotokas" (PDF). Oceanic Linguistics. 45 (1): 206–209. doi:10.1353/ol.2006.0018. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-192E-4. S2CID 145809531.