Kala, also known as Kela, is an Austronesian language spoken by about 2200 people (in 2002) in several villages along the south coast of the Huon Gulf between Salamaua Peninsula and the Paiawa River, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea.
The voiced alveolar fricative [z] only exists in the dialects spoken in Apoze and Lambu villages.
The practical writing system for Kala includes the following letters: ⟨a, ã, b, d, e, ẽ, g, i, ĩ, k, l, m, n, ŋ, o, õ, p, s, t, u, ũ, w, y, z⟩.
The committee chose the tilde symbol to represent nasal vowels in their practical writing system as it reminded them of ocean waves (called titi in Kala) since they are coastal people.
[2] Source:[3] Like most of the languages around the Huon Gulf, Kala has a system of birth order names (Holzknecht 1989: 43-45, Devolder et al 2012).