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Dobu

A language of Papua New Guinea

ISO 639-3: dob

Population	10,000 (1998 SIL). 60% monolingual.
Region	Milne Bay Province, Esa’ala District, Sanaroa, Dobu, parts of Fergusson and Normanby islands. 500 villages.
Language map	Papua New Guinea, Map 17, reference number 791
Alternate names	Dobuan
Dialects	Galubwa, Sanaroa, Ubuia, Central Dobu, Loboda (Roboda, Dawada-Siausi). Lexical similarity: 56% with Molima [mox] (most similar).
Classification	Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Western Oceanic, Papuan Tip, Nuclear, North Papuan Mainland-D’Entrecasteaux, Dobu-Duau
Language use	Trade language of most of D’entrecasteaux Islands. Lingua franca for 100,000 (1987 SIL). Also use some Motu [meu], English, or adjacent languages.
Language development	Literacy rate in L1: 90%. Literacy rate in L2: 90%. Dictionary. Bible: 1928.
Writing system	Latin script.
Comments	Many schools. SOV. Agriculturalists: yams.

Entries from the SIL Bibliography about this language:

Academic Publications

EDONI, Gail, author. 1989. "‘Head and shoulders, knees and toes....’: The semantics of Dobuan body parts."  

LITHGOW, Daphne, author. 1977. Dobu phonemics.  

LITHGOW, Daphne; LITHGOW, David, authors. 1987. "Practical spelling."  

LITHGOW, Daphne; LITHGOW, David, compilers. 1998. Dobu—English dictionary.  

LITHGOW, Daphne; LITHGOW, David, compilers. 2007. Dobu lexicon.  

LITHGOW, David, author. 1975. A grammatical analysis of a Dobu text.  

LITHGOW, David, author. 1978. First things first in Dobu.  

LITHGOW, David, author. 1992. Dobu Organised Phonology Data.  

LOVING, Richard, editor. 1978. Miscellaneous papers on Dobu and Arapesh.

Vernacular Publications

Dobu iyaninao tetelidi. 1975.

Dobu new reader, book 1. 1997.

Dobu-English dictionary. 1977.

Emwasala tubudao 1. 1976.

Tada sawa ʼena dimdim. 1977.

Tada sawa ʼena Dobu 1, 2. 1974.

Teacher’s guide for Dobu primers 1 and 2. 1974.