Korowai language

Last updated
Korowai
Kolufaup
Region Becking River, South Papua, Indonesia
Ethnicity Korowai
Native speakers
3,500 (2007) [1]
Trans-New Guinea
Language codes
ISO 639-3 khe
Glottolog koro1312
ELP Korowai

Korowai (Kolufaup) is a Trans-New-Guinean language spoken in South Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken by the Korowai people who live along the Becking River.

Contents

Phonology

Consonants [2]
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive p b t d ɟ j k g
Prenasalized ᵐb mb ⁿd nd ᵑg ngg
Fricative ɸ f s x kh
Nasal m n
Approximant w l j y, ɥ
Vowels [2]
Front Central Back
High i y ü u
Mid-high e é( ə e)
Mid-low ɛ è ɔ o
Low a

Stress is unpredictable and phonemic. [2]

Notes

  1. Korowai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. 1 2 3 de Vries, Lourens; van Enk, Gerrit J. (1997). The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language and its Cultural Context. Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics. Vol. 9. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780195105513.

Related Research Articles

Modern Hebrew has 25 to 27 consonants and 5 vowels, depending on the speaker and the analysis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romance languages</span> Direct descendants of Vulgar Latin

The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family.

In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length, full articulation of the vowel, and changes in tone. The terms stress and accent are often used synonymously in that context but are sometimes distinguished. For example, when emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called pitch accent, and when produced through length alone, it is called quantitative accent. When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called stress accent or dynamic accent; English uses what is called variable stress accent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sinhala language</span> Indo-Aryan language native to Sri Lanka

Sinhala, sometimes called Sinhalese, is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script, which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India.

Isochrony is a linguistic analysis or hypothesis assuming that any spoken language's utterances are divisible into equal rhythmic portions of some kind. Under this assumption, languages are proposed to broadly fall into one of two categories based on rhythm or timing: syllable-timed or stress-timed languages. However, empirical studies have been unable to directly or fully support the hypothesis, so the concept remains controversial in linguistics.

English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buryat language</span> Mongolic language of Buryatia (Russia) and neighbouring areas

Buryat or Buriat, known in foreign sources as the Bargu-Buryat dialect of Mongolian, and in pre-1956 Soviet sources as Buryat-Mongolian, is a variety of the Mongolic languages spoken by the Buryats and Bargas that is classified either as a language or major dialect group of Mongolian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Portuguese</span> Dialect of the Portuguese language

European Portuguese, also known as Portuguese of Portugal, Iberian Portuguese, and Peninsular Portuguese, refers to the dialects of the Portuguese language spoken in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau. The word "European" was chosen to avoid the clash of "Portuguese Portuguese" as opposed to Brazilian Portuguese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lule Sámi</span> Endangered Uralic language of Scandinavia

Lule Sámi is a Uralic-Sámi language spoken around the Lule River in Sweden and in the northern parts of Nordland county in Norway. In Norway it is especially seen in Hamarøy Municipality, where Lule Sámi is one of the official languages. It is written in the Latin script, having an official alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shipibo language</span> Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil

Shipibo is a Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil by approximately 26,000 speakers. Shipibo is a recognized indigenous language of Peru.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bontoc language</span> Northern Luzon language spoken in the Philippines

Bontoc (Bontok) is the native language of the indigenous Bontoc people of the Mountain Province, in the northern part of the Philippines.

Sa or Saa language is an Austronesian language spoken in southern Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. It had an estimated 2,500 speakers in the year 2000.

The Tawbuid language is a language spoken by Tawbuid Mangyans in the province of Mindoro in the Philippines. It is divided into eastern and western dialects. The Bangon Mangyans also speak the western dialect of Tawbuid.

Kara is an Austronesian language spoken by about 5,000 people in 1998 in the Kavieng District of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rikbaktsa language</span> Macro-Ge language spoken in Brazil

The Rikbaktsa language, also spelled Aripaktsa, Erikbatsa or Erikpatsa and known ambiguously as Canoeiro, is a language spoken by the Rikbaktsa people of Mato Grosso, Brazil, that forms its own branch of the Macro-Gê languages.

Kensiu (Kensiw) is an Austroasiatic language of the Jahaic subbranch. It is spoken by a small community of 300 people in Yala Province in southern Thailand and also reportedly by a community of approximately 300 speakers in Western Malaysia in Perak and Kedah states. Speakers of this language are Negritos who are known as the Maniq people or Mani of Thailand. In Malaysia, they are counted among the Orang Asli.

The phonology of Danish is similar to that of the other closely related Scandinavian languages, Swedish and Norwegian, but it also has distinct features setting it apart. For example, Danish has a suprasegmental feature known as stød which is a kind of laryngeal phonation that is used phonemically. It also exhibits extensive lenition of plosives, which is noticeably more common than in the neighboring languages. Because of these and a few other features, spoken Danish can be challenging for Norwegians and Swedes to understand without training, although they can easily read written Danish.

Bwaidoka is an Austronesian language spoken in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. It is a local lingua franca.

Luang, also known as Literi Lagona, is an Austronesian language spoken in the Leti Islands and the Babar Islands in Maluku, Indonesia. It is closely related to the neighboring Leti language, with 89% shared basic vocabulary.

Bunama is an Austronesian language spoken in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands of Papua New Guinea.

References