Wiru or Witu is the language spoken by the Wiru people of Ialibu-Pangia District of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. The language has been described by Harland Kerr, a missionary who lived in the Wiru community for many years. Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts, as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs. There are a considerable number of resemblances with the Engan languages, suggesting Wiru might be a member of that family, but language contact has not been ruled out as the reason. Usher classifies it with the Teberan languages.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Pronouns

Trans–New Guinea–like pronouns are no 1sg (< *na) and ki-wi 2pl, ki-ta 2du (< *ki).

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Franklin (1973, 1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:

Syntax

Wiru has a general noun-modifying clause construction. In this construction, a noun can be modified by a clause that immediately precedes it. The noun may, but need not, correspond to an argument of the modifying clause. Such constructions can be used to express a wide range of semantic relationships between clause and noun. The follow examples all use the same noun-modifying clause construction: [No ka-k-u] tono tubea. 1SG stay-PRS-1SG mountain big 'The mountain I am on top of is big.' [Kia-nea karo pi-k-i] ail-aroa eida piri-ki-ya. be.red-INF car lie-PRS-2/3PL man-woman there lie-PRS-2/3PL-HAB 'The people who own red cars live there.' [Kenbra namolo no-k-o] ko ou. Canberra first come-PST-1PL story say.1SG.FUT 'I'll tell the story about the first time we came to Canberra.' [Toro pea skul ke poa-rok-o] oi no-ka-l-e... 1PL all school LOC go-OPT-1PL time come-PST-DS-2/3PL... 'The time for all of us to go to school arrived...' The noun-modifying clause construction imposes a falling tone on the head noun. That is, no matter what the lexical tone of the noun that is being modified is, it takes on a high-low tone pattern when it is modified in a noun-modifying clause construction.

Evolution

Wiru reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are: