Mentawai language

The Mentawai language is an Austronesian language, spoken by the Mentawai people of the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra, Indonesia.

Mentawai
Behase Mentawei
Native toWest Sumatra, Indonesia
RegionMentawai Islands
Native speakers
58,000 (2000 census)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3mwv
Glottologment1249[2]

Dialects

According to Ethnologue, Mentawai dialects include: Silabu, Sipura – Simalegi, Sakalagan, Saumanganja – North Siberut, South Siberut – Taikaku – Pagai.[1]

Syamsir Arifin, et al. (1992) list twelve dialects of Mentawai:

Dialects in Siberut Island are:[3]

  • Sikapone
  • Togiiite
  • Pokai
  • Simajegi
  • Simatalu
  • Paipajet
  • Sakuddei
  • Sagulubbe
  • Sirileleu
  • Sikabaluan
  • Sempungan
  • Saibi & Sarabua
  • Silaoinan
  • Sarareiket
  • Sabirut

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive voiceless p t k
voiced b d ɡ
Affricate voiceless (t͡ɕ)
voiced d͡ʑ
Fricative s
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Lateral l
Rhotic r
Semivowel w j
  • Allophones of /b ɡ k/ can be heard as [β ɣ ʔ]. [t͡ɕ] is a distinct sound in Mentawai, but not given phoneme status by Syamsir et al. because of the lack of minimal contrasts.[4]
  • The semivowels /w j/ only appear in final position.

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a
gollark: Okay, it sounds like updating may be a poor idea presently.
gollark: The new GTech EnderCube Facility.
gollark: If NFT is simple enough I can make it also do that.
gollark: I have a library for encoding data as the builtin CC paint format, actually.
gollark: Unrelatedly, potatOS now minifies itself.

References

  1. Mentawai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mentawai". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. http://www.indonesiatravelingguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Siberut-National-Park-map-800.jpg
  4. Arifin, Malano & Kasim (1992)

Bibliography


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