Lau, also known as Mala, is an Oceanic language spoken on northeast Malaita, in the Solomon Islands.
Lau distinguishes voiced and voiceless stops and has a separate series of labial-velar phonemes distinct from the regular velars.
The complete consonant inventory is presented in the table below (with orthographical conventions in angled brackets).
For example, Aba 'hand' can be suffixed by the first person singular possessive marker -gu to form Aba'gu 'my hand'.
[2] Pronouns may only be attached to a certain class of nouns, namely anything that is in close relationship to the person who takes, occupies or holds something without necessarily having ownership.
Most adverbs that are use in the Lau language are just nouns and verbs and occasionally some adjectives.
Lau uses verbs for attributes, but some adjectives appear without the verbal particles.
The a- is prefixed to verbs to form participles, as in luga 'to lose'; ma- denotes condition, e.g. lingi 'to pour'.
[2] The Lau clause is divided into five different domains, which are, in order: In the example below, ioli gi 'people' is a noun phrase located in the subject field.
God, ka faamouria a King!Nia ka aofia dianaUria toa gi;Fa'sia firu'a,Falea mai uria diana,Faa'diana na talo nia,God, faamouria a King!