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Warrongo is an Australian Aboriginal language, one of the dozen languages of the Maric branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. It was formerly spoken by the Warrongo people in the area around Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Its last native speaker was Alf Palmer, who died in 1981.
Tzeltal or Tseltal is a Mayan language spoken in the Mexican state of Chiapas, mostly in the municipalities of Ocosingo, Altamirano, Huixtán, Tenejapa, Yajalón, Chanal, Sitalá, Amatenango del Valle, Socoltenango, Las Rosas, Chilón, San Juan Cancuc, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Oxchuc. Tzeltal is one of many Mayan languages spoken near this eastern region of Chiapas, including Tzotzil, Chʼol, and Tojolabʼal, among others. There is also a small Tzeltal diaspora in other parts of Mexico and the United States, primarily as a result of unfavorable economic conditions in Chiapas.
The Niellim language is a Bua language spoken by some 5,000 people along the Chari River in southern Chad. It is mainly spoken in two areas: one around the city of Sarh and one, its traditional home, further north, between about 9°30′ and 9°50′ N, corresponding to the former chiefdoms of Pra, Niellim, and Niou.
Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines.
Vaeakau-Taumako is a Polynesian language spoken in some of the Reef Islands as well as in the Taumako Islands in the Temotu province of the Solomon Islands.
Taba is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the South Halmahera–West New Guinea group. It is spoken mostly on the islands of Makian, Kayoa and southern Halmahera in North Maluku province of Indonesia by about 20,000 people.
The Nafsan language, also known as South Efate or Erakor, is a Southern Oceanic language spoken on the island of Efate in central Vanuatu. As of 2005, there are approximately 6,000 speakers who live in coastal villages from Pango to Eton. The language's grammar has been studied by Nick Thieberger, who has produced a book of stories and a dictionary of the language.
In linguistic typology, a verb–object–subject or verb–object–agent language, which is commonly abbreviated VOS or VOA, is one in which most sentences arrange their elements in that order. That would be the equivalent in English to "Drank cocktail Sam." The relatively rare default word order accounts for only 3% of the world's languages. It is the fourth-most common default word order among the world's languages out of the six. It is a more common default permutation than OVS and OSV but is significantly rarer than SOV, SVO, and VSO. Families in which all or many of their languages are VOS include the following:
Tamambo, or Malo, is an Oceanic language spoken by 4,000 people on Malo and nearby islands in Vanuatu.
Rukai is a Formosan language spoken by the Rukai people in Taiwan. It is a member of the Austronesian language family. The Rukai language comprises six dialects, which are Budai, Labuan, Maga, Mantauran, Tanan and Tona. The number of speakers of the six Rukai dialects is estimated to be about 10,000. Some of them are monolingual. There are varying degrees of mutual intelligibility among the Rukai dialects. Rukai is notable for its distinct grammatical voice system among the Formosan languages.
Ixcatec is a language spoken by the people of the Mexican village of Santa María Ixcatlan, in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca. The Ixcatec language belongs to the Popolocan branch of the Oto-manguean language family. It is believed to have been the second language to branch off from the others within the Popolocan subgroup, though there is a small debate over the relation it has to them.
Dagaare is the language of the Dagaaba people of Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast. It has been described as a dialect continuum that also includes Waale and Birifor. Dagaare language varies in dialect stemming from other family languages including: Dagbane, Waale, Mabia, Gurene, Mampruli, Kusaal, Buli, Niger-Congo, and many other sub languages resulting in around 3 million Dagaare speakers. Throughout the regions of native Dagaare speakers the dialect comes from Northern, Central, Western, and Southern areas referring to the language differently. Burkina Faso refers to Dagaare as Dagara and Birifor to natives in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. The native tongue is still universally known as Dagaare. Amongst the different dialects, the standard for Dagaare is derived from the Central region’s dialect. Southern Dagaare also stems from the Dagaare language and is known to be commonly spoken in Wa and Kaleo.
Scrambling is a syntactic phenomenon wherein sentences can be formulated using a variety of different word orders without any change in meaning. Scrambling often results in a discontinuity since the scrambled expression can end up at a distance from its head. Scrambling does not occur in English, but it is frequent in languages with freer word order, such as German, Russian, Persian and Turkic languages. The term was coined by Haj Ross in his 1967 dissertation and is widely used in present work, particularly with the generative tradition.
Abui is a non-Austronesian language of the Alor Archipelago. It is spoken in the central part of Alor Island in Eastern Indonesia, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province by the Abui people. The native name in the Takalelang dialect is Abui tanga which literally translates as 'mountain language'.
Karo, referred to in Indonesia as Bahasa Karo, is an Austronesian language that is spoken by the Karo people of Indonesia. It is used by around 600,000 people in North Sumatra. It is mainly spoken in Karo Regency, southern parts of Deli Serdang Regency and northern parts of Dairi Regency, North Sumatra, Indonesia. It was historically written using the Batak alphabet which is descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India by way of the Pallava and Old Kawi scripts, but nowadays only a tiny number of Karo can write or understand the script, and instead the Latin script is used.
The syntax of the Welsh language has much in common with the syntax of other Insular Celtic languages. It is, for example, heavily right-branching, and the verb for be is crucial to constructing many different types of clauses. Any verb may be inflected for three tenses, and a range of additional tenses are constructed with auxiliary verbs and particles. Welsh lacks true subordinating conjunctions, and instead relies on special verb forms and preverbal particles to create subordinate clauses.
Farefare or Frafra, also known by the regional name of Gurenne (Gurene), is the language of the Frafra people of northern Ghana, particularly the Upper East Region, and southern Burkina Faso. It is a national language of Ghana, and is closely related to Dagbani and other languages of Northern Ghana, and also related to Mossi, also known as Mooré, the national language of Burkina Faso.
Trumai is an endangered language isolate of Brazil. Most Trumai are fluent in languages of wider communication, and children are not learning it well.
Mẽbêngôkre, sometimes referred to as Kayapó is a Northern Jê language spoken by the Kayapó and the Xikrin people in the north of Mato Grosso and Pará in Brazil. There are around 8,600 native speakers since 2010 based on the 2015 Ethnologue 18th edition. Due to the number of speakers and the influence of Portuguese speakers, the language stands at a sixth level of endangerment; in which the materials for literacy and education in Mẽbêngôkre are very limited.
Daakaka[ⁿdaːkaka] is a native language of Ambrym, Vanuatu. It is spoken by about one thousand speakers in the south-western corner of the island.
References
- Chowning, Ann; Goodenough, Ward H. (2016). A Dictionary of the Lakalai (Nakanai) Language of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics. hdl: 1885/107217 . ISBN 9781922185310.
- Johnston, Raymond L. (1978). Nakanai Syntax (PhD thesis). Australian National University. doi: 10.25911/5D763637B41D4 . hdl: 1885/10920 .
- Johnston, Raymond L. (1980). Nakanai of New Britain: The Grammar of an Oceanic Language Series. Pacific Linguistics Series B-70. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi: 10.15144/PL-B70 . hdl: 1885/148444 .
- Spaelti, Philip (1997). Dimensions of Variation in Multi-Pattern Reduplication (PhD thesis). University of California, Santa Cruz. doi: 10.7282/T3NV9H3K .