Batuley language

Batuley
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Aru Islands
Native speakers	3,600 (2011)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central–Eastern Aru Batuley; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bay
Glottolog	batu1258[2]

Batuley (Gwatale) is a language spoken on the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. It is close to Mariri; Hughes (1987) estimates that around 80% of lexical items are shared. The language's name comes from the Gwata-le island (Batuley in Indonesian), which the Batuley consider their homeland (Daigle (2019))

Geographical distribution

Batuley is spoken in Eastern Indonesia across several villages that Daigle (2019) lists in his thesis. Some of them are Kabalsiang in Aduar Island, Kumul in the identically-named island, and Gwaria (Waria) in the Island of Gwari.

Phonology

Vowels

Batuley has a simple five-vowel system with no vowel length distinction (Daigle 2019).

i
e
u
o
a

[ɪ] is an allophone of /i/ and /e/ (in different environments). [e] is an allophone of /a/ when it does not receive the primary stress. Furhtermore, /e/ and /i/ may both be reduced to a schwa in fast speech in certain conditions.

Consonants

Daigle (2019)

/b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/
/m/ /n/ /ŋ/
/r/
/ɸ/ /s/
/ʤ/
/l/
/w/ /j/

Lexicon

Daigle (2019)

gwayor: water, fresh water
gwari: island
keiran: sister; branch
lef: big house
kai: wood, tree
ban: chest, breast
fol gwayer: breast milk (fol: breast, gwayer: its water)
kaom: scorpion
gwarfagfag: small fresh-water turtle
kudomsai: cloud
ror: dance (n)
fulan: month
sapato, safato: shoe (borrowing)
solar: diesel fuel (borrowing)
nol: zero (borrowing)
fikir: think (borrowing)
fuis: cat (borrowing)
guru: teacher (borrowing)
kartas: paper (borrowing)
kasar: crack, split (borrowing)
kofi: hat (borrowing)
tata: older sibling (borrowing)
tempo: year (borrowing)
buku: book (borrowing)

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References

Batuley at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Batuley". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.