| Huli | |
| Imagealt: | Huli Wigman from Hela Province of Papua New Guinea |
| Region: | Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea |
| Ethnicity: | Huli people |
| Speakers: | 150,000 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Papuan |
| Fam1: | Trans-New Guinea? |
| Fam2: | Engan |
| Fam3: | South Engan |
| Script: | Latin script (Huli alphabet) Huli Braille |
| Iso3: | hui |
| Glotto: | huli1244 |
| Glottorefname: | Huli |
Huli is a Tari language spoken by the Huli people of the Hela Province of Papua New Guinea. It has a pentadecimal (base-15) numeral system: means 15, means 15×2 = 30, and means 15×15 = 225.
Huli has a pandanus language called tayenda tu ha illili (bush divide taboo) used for collecting karuka nuts (anga) as well as hunting or traveling.[1] Tayenda is used to evade malevolent bush spirits.[1] The grammar for Tayenda is nearly identical to normal Huli, but the vocabulary is changed, often borrowing words from Duna but with changed meanings.[1]
Huli has a syllable structure of (C)V.
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i ĩ | u ũ | |
| Mid | e ẽ | o õ | |
| Open | ɑ ɑ̃ | ||
Vowel nasality is phonemic in the language.Vowels can also carry three phonemic tones; high-falling, mid-level, and low-rising.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Stop | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| prenasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Trill | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
Stops /p t k/ can become aspirated as [pʰ tʰ kʰ].
Many speakers pronounce /t/ as [s] before /i/.
/d/ is realized as voiceless as [d̥] when occurring word-initially, and is palatalized as [dʲ] between /i/ and a word-final /ɑ/.
/r/ only occurs word-medially.
/b ɡ/ can be phonetically realized as fricatives intervocalically as [β ɣ].