It was formerly called Santa Ana, under which name several Anglican publications of the Church of the Province of Melanesia have been printed in this language from 1938 to the present.
Owa is a Central Eastern Oceanic language and can be categorized as a branch of the Austronesia family.
The Austronesian language family is rather large and expands from the Pacific Islands to Madagascar.
The Owa language consists of nineteen phonemes, which are written using twenty letters.
Mellow (2013) uses the following orthography:[6] Generally speaking, nouns in Owa are simple; however, the pronouns and markers used with them are more complex and provide more details.
Like nouns, pronouns also fall into three separate categories: singular, dual, and plural.
The former category is related to ownership, while the latter is restricted to nouns denoting body parts or intimate people.
For example, in naefe ia-ku 'my knife', the first person singular possessive affix -ku is attached to the classifier ia-.
[19] Conjunctions have both male and female forms in Owa, which is a characteristic that rarely appears in Oceanic languages.
mo is followed by males, mika is followed by females, and mina, mana are followed by non-human entities.
[20] JonJohnmikaandMaryMarymoandPitaPeterJon mika Mary mo PitaJohn and Mary and Peter'John, Mary, and Peter'[21]There are four main types of verbs: one-place verbs, two-place verbs, noun-modifiers, and adverbs AARTniucoconutkanaDEM.4.SGke3SG:REALtewatallwauveryA niu kana ke tewa wauART coconut DEM.4.SG 3SG:REAL tall very'That coconut palm is very tall.