West Damar
North Damar
Damar Batumerah
Native toIndonesia
RegionMaluku Islands
Native speakers
(800 cited 1987)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3drn
Glottologwest2548

West Damar, or North Damar, is an Austronesian language of Damar Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. In spite of rather low cognacy rates with its neighboring languages,[2] it can be classified as part of the Babar languages based on qualitative evidence.[3]

It is only spoken in the village of Batumerah,[4] located on the north-western part of Damar.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary list:[4]

West Damar Indonesian English
odo saya I
ede engkau you (sing.)
idi dia he, she
itito kita we (incl.)
odomo kami we (exc.)
edmi kamu you (pl.)
idiro mereka they
mehno satu one
wyeru dua two
wyetteli tiga three
wyoto empat four
wilimo lima five
wyenamo enam six
witi tujuh seven
way delapan eight
wisi sembilan nine
uswuti sepuluh ten
ulkona kepala head
lima tangan hand
eya kaki foot

Sample sentences

Ede mpondai? - Are you ill?

E’e, odo ulkonacheni nchepondo. - Yes, I have a headache.

Wohleyo Binayani idihe hulchupondeheti wohleyo Ahehendini - The mountain Binaya is the highest at the Seram island.

See also

References

  1. ^ West Damar at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Mark Taber. 1993. Toward a better understanding of the Indigenous Languages of Southwestern Maluku. Oceanic Linguistics 32. 389-441.
  3. ^ Aone van Engelenhoven. 2010. Tentatively locating West-Damar among the languages of Southwest Maluku. In Chlenova, Svetlana and Fedorchuk, Artem (eds.), Studia Anthropologica: a Festschrift in Honor of Michael Chlenov, 297-326. Moscow-Jerusalem: Gesharim.
  4. ^ a b "West Damar Language or Damar-Batumerah, an Isolate in South-Eastern Indonesia" (PDF). 2015-05-12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-05-12. Retrieved 2020-07-04.

Further reading


Categories