• belongs to the Admiralties sub-group of the Oceanic family of languages
• Oceanic is the Eastern branch of Austronesian which includes Formosan languages, the Malay-Indonesian languages, and Malagasy (spoken in Madagascar)
• Pohowa is spoken in the southern central area of Manus Island, part of Manus Province, Papua New Guinea
• there are about 1,000 speakers of the language

Pohowa Language Project

Project director: David Beck Pohowa (also known as Pahavai, Pelipowai, Bowai, Bohuai, and Bohuai-Tulu) is one of about 30 Austronesian languages spoken on Manus Island located to the north of the Papua New Guinea mainland. Linguistically, it belongs to the Admiralties subgroup of the Oceanic branch of Austronesian languages. Recent estimates have put the number of speakers below 1,000. The present project aims produce linguistic documentation of Pohowa, beginning with a grammatical sketch and basic dictionary. Data for this project was collected in New Zealand in 2001 and Papua New Guinea in 2007.

• Project director: John Newman