Wom language (Papua New Guinea)

Wom or Wam is a Papuan language of the Torricelli language family spoken by 4,264 people (as of 2003^[update]) in East Sepik province, Papua New Guinea.

Wom
Region	East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (12 villages)
Native speakers	4,300 (2003)[1]
Language family	Torricelli Wom
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wmo
Glottolog	womp1235
ELP	Wom

For the Nigerian language, see Perema language.

Phonology

Consonants^[2]

	Labial	Alveolar	Dorsal
			plain	labial
Plosive	p	t	k	kʷ
Prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᵑg	ᵑgʷ
Fricative		s	h
Nasal	m	n
Approximant		l	j	w

• The prenasalised plosives /ᵐb ⁿd ᵑg ᵑgʷ/ are plain [b d g gʷ] word-initially.
• /s/ can be realized as [ts] word-initially.
• /h/ can be heard as [x] intervocalically.

Vowels^[2]

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Additionally, the following diphthongs can be found: /ei/, /ai/, /oi/, /au/, /ou/.

Stress is phonemic.^[2]

External links

• Paradisec has two collections with materials from Wom, one from Arthur Capell (AC1) and the other from Don Laycock (DL2)

References

1. Wom at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Luoma, Pirkko; Henry, Joan; Hoel, Hanna-Marie; James, Dorothy (1999). Wom Organised Phonology Data. SIL International.