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Amal language

Sepik language spoken in Papua New Guinea


Summary

Sepik language spoken in Papua New Guinea

FieldValue
nameAmal
regionSandaun Province and East Sepik Province
speakers830
date2003
refe25
familycolorPapuan
fam1Sepik
fam2Upper Sepik
fam3Amal–Kalou
iso3aad
glottoamal1242
glottorefnameAmal

Amal is a language spoken along the border of Sandaun Province and East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, along the Wagana River near the confluence with Wanibe Creek. Foley (2018) classifies Amal as a primary branch of the Sepik languages, though it is quite close to Kalou.

Pronouns

Pronouns are:

:{| |+ Amal pronouns ! !! sg !! pl |- ! 1 | ŋan || nut |- ! 2 | in || kun |- ! 3 | may || ilum |}

Cognates

Amal cognates with Sepik languages are:

  • tal ‘woman’
  • yan ‘child’
  • lal ‘tongue’
  • mi ‘breast’
  • waplo ‘liver’
  • nip ‘blood’
  • yen ‘egg’
  • ak ‘house’

Foley (2018) notes that there appears to be somewhat more lexical similarities between Amal and the Tama languages, but does not consider them to form a group with each other.

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words of Amal are from Laycock (1968), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:

:{| class="wikitable sortable" ! gloss !! Amal |- ! head

makələ
! ear
marj
-
! eye
nai
-
! nose
yimeʔ
-
! tooth
pu
-
! tongue
lal
-
! leg
-
! louse
ŋin
-
! dog
wun
-
! bird
yok
-
! egg
yen
-
! blood
niːp
-
! bone
nəŋolak
-
! skin
puːk
-
! breast
m
-
! tree
piːt
-
! man
wul
-
! woman
tal
-
! sun
mwak
-
! moon
yimal
-
! water
iːp
-
! fire
waː
-
! stone
tipal
-
! two
kila
}

References

References

  1. Foley, William A.. (2018). "The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide". De Gruyter Mouton.
  2. [[Donald Laycock. Laycock, Donald C.]] 1968. Languages of the Lumi Subdistrict (West Sepik District), New Guinea. ''[[Oceanic Linguistics]]'', 7 (1): 36-66.
  3. Greenhill, Simon. (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea".
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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