Mbahaam–Iha languages

The Mbahaam–Iha languages are a pair of Papuan languages spoken on the Bomberai Peninsula of western New Guinea. The two languages, Baham (Mbaham) and Iha, are closely related to each other.

Mbahaam–Iha
Geographic distribution	West New Guinea, Bomberai Peninsula
Linguistic classification	Trans–New Guinea Berau Gulf West Bomberai Mbahaam–Iha
Subdivisions	Mbaham Iha
Glottolog	nucl1641[1]

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant and vowel inventories as:[2]

*m	*n
*p	*t		*k	*kʷ
*mb	*nd		*ŋg	*ŋgʷ
	*s
*w	*r	*j

Prenasalized plosives do not occur initially, having merged with the voiceless plosives.

The vowels are *i *u *ɛ *ɔ *a and the diphthongs *iɛ *ɛi.

Pronouns

Usher (2020) reconstructs the free pronouns as:[2]

	sg	pl
1excl	*[a/ɔ]n	[*mbi]
1incl		*in
2	*k[a/ɔ]	*ki
3	*m[a/ɔ]	*mi, *wat

Cognates

Protoforms of the 20 most-stable items[3] in the Swadesh list include the following.[2]

gloss	Proto-Mbahaam–Iha
*mɛin	louse
?	two
*kiˈra	water
*kʷiɛr	ear
*kimi	die
*[a/ɔ]n	I
?	liver
? (k(i)jɛp / kɛndɛp)	eye
*tan	hand
*kɔmɛn	hear
*wiˈra, aˈtɔkʷ	tree, tree/wood
*ˈsɛjir	fish
*niɛ	name
*war	stone
?	tooth
*sɔn	breast
*k[a/ɔ]	you
?	path
*ˈtɔkar	bone
?	tongue (*mak voice/language)

References

Usher, Timothy and Antoinette Schapper, 2018. "The lexicons of the Papuan languages of the Onin Peninsula and their influences". In Antoinette Schapper, ed. Contact and substrate in the languages of Wallacea part 2. NUSA 64: 39–63.

1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Nuclear West Bomberai". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
2. New Guinea World, Mbaham–Iha
3. Holman, Eric W., Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Viveka Velupillai, André Müller, Dik Bakker (2008). "Explorations in Automated Language Classification". Folia Linguistica, Vol. 42, no. 2, 331–354

External links

• Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Proto–Mbahaam–Iha