Sio Language

Sio (also spelled Siâ) is an Austronesian language spoken by about 3,500 people on the north coast of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. According to Harding and Clark (1994), Sio speakers lived in a single village on a small offshore island until the Pacific War, after which they established four villages on the nearby coast: Lambutina, Basakalo, Laelo, and Balambu. Nambariwa, another coastal village a few miles to the east, is also Sio-speaking.

Michael Stolz (d. 1931) of the German Lutheran Neuendettelsauer Mission arrived in 1910, and Sio villagers converted en masse in 1919. "Since then the Sio have produced many Lutheran evangelists, lay mission workers, teachers, and churchmen" (Harding and Clark 1994: 31). However, the Sio villages were assigned to the mostly Papuan Kâte language circuit, rather than to the mostly Austronesian Jabêm language circuit. The first Sio orthography was based on that of Kâte, and was used in the publication in 1953 of Miti Kanaŋo, a book containing Bible stories, Luther's Small Catechism, and 160 hymns, all in the Sio language. Stolz was the principal translator, although many of the hymns were composed by native speakers of Sio, and the whole volume was edited by Hans Wagner, Stolz's successor.