Consonants

The consonants can be separated into four different categories: labial (sound produced with the lips), alveolar (produced with the upper teeth), velar (produced with the back of the tongue), and glottal (produced with the glottis).

Owa distinguishes the following matters of articulation: voiceless stops, voiced stops, vibrants, voiceless fricatives, voiced fricatives, nasals, and approximants. Although there are velar consonants, there are no voiced velar or alveolar stops. However, Owa does feature the voiced fricative [ɣ] in lieu of a voiced velar stop.

Furthermore, there are lengthened segments used to distinguish semantic meaning, as in ssss, used to mean ‘yes, I agree’.^[2]

Vowels

The Owa language consists of 5 phonemic vowels, ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔ, ɐ, separated in three categories: front (ɪ, ɛ), central (ɐ), and back (ɔ ʊ). Long and short vowels are used to distinguish tense.

While vowels can be nasalized before nasal consonants, this nasalization is not phonemic.

Stress

Usually, the second-to-last syllable is stressed in the Owa language, e.g. au'.ra.gi 'married'.^[2] But occasionally the third-to-last syllable is stressed, as in fe.fe.ne 'female'.^[2] However, stress placement depends on the context, specifically where it is located in the sentence; therefore, it is difficult to predict stress patterns in Owa.

Nouns phrases

Generally speaking, nouns in Owa are simple; however, the pronouns and markers used with them are more complex and provide more details. While English only distinguishes singular and plural number, Owa distinguishes singular, dual, and plural, which is a characteristic of most Oceanic languages.^[2] Pronouns have both inclusive, which include the speaker, and exclusive forms, which exclude the speaker. Like nouns, pronouns also fall into three separate categories: singular, dual, and plural.

Similar to Romance languages like Spanish, Owa has gender-specific articles.

• Male names are accompanied with the article o or ko
• Female names are proceeded by ka^[2]

Object suffixes also serve to establish the person and number. Examples are –au for the 1st person singular exclusive, and –go for the * 2nd person singular.

Alienable and inalienable nouns are distinguished. The former category is related to ownership, while the latter is restricted to nouns denoting body parts or intimate people. Inalienable nouns that are distinguished by possessive suffixes. Alienable nouns are not directly suffixed when possessed; rather, the possessive suffix appears on a classifier. E.g. in naefe ia-ku 'my knife', the first person singular possessive affix -ku is attached to the classifier ia-. ^[2] In some cases alienability is difficult to determine.

Among the classifiers that are used in possessive phrases in Owa, the languages distinguish between edible and drinkable possessions.

• Edible possession: -qa, -mwa, -na
• Non-edible (general) possession: -ku, -mu, -na/ni^[2]

Adjectives

Owa has only few adjectives:

• kere'small' appears before the noun^[2]
• faoru 'new', mafana 'hot', and masuri 'black' all appear after the noun

Because Owa only consists of a few adjectives, other means are used to describe nouns. To name a few, articles, clauses and particles serve to transform nouns.

The constituent order within a noun phrase is (specifier) (adj.) Head (adj.) (modifier construction) (dem) (ana). '^[2] The specifier acts as an article and the head is the noun. The modifier construction includes either a number, possession or relative clause which is used to describe the noun preceding because the adjectives are relatively vague.

Adverbs

The word 'mi,' translates to 'and' which can also take the form of 'me,' can act as an adverb by preceding the verb. For example: 'meau, mia' is the singular form, and 'mego, migo' is the second person form. The adverb usually serves as accompaniment or cooperation. ^[2]

Conjunctions

Conjunctions have both male and female forms in Owa, which is a characteristic that rarely appears in Oceanic languages. There are separate words to indicate whether the conjunction is conjoining a feminine or a masculine entity. mo is followed by males, and mika is followed by females.