Waimoa or Waimaa is a spoken by about 18,467 (2010 census)
people in northeast
East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-west ...
. Waimoa proper is reported to be
mutually intelligible with neighboring
Kairui and
Midiki, with 5,000 speakers total.
The classification of Waimoa is unclear. Structurally, it is
Malayo-Polynesian
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeas ...
. However, its vocabulary is largely Papuan, similar to that of
Makasae
Makasae (also known as Makassai, Macassai, Ma'asae, Makasai) is a Papuan language spoken by about 100,000 people in the eastern part of East Timor, in the districts of Baucau and Viqueque, just to the west of Fataluku. It is the most widely spok ...
. Although generally classified as Austronesian languages or dialects that have been largely
relexified under the influence of a language related to Makasae, it is possible that Waimoa, Kairui, and Midiki are instead Papuan languages related to Makasae which have been influenced by Austronesian.
Phonology
Similarly to other Austronesian languages of the region, Waimoa has
aspirated/voiceless and glottalized/ejective consonants, which are distributed like and consonant clusters (or perhaps and ) but are often pronounced as single segments.
[Kirsten Culhane (2021) Waimaa consonants: phonology and typological position in Greater Timor. 15th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics.]
Similarly there are voiceless and glottalized .
There is also
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, mea ...
.
See also
*
Kawaimina
References
Timor–Babar languages
Languages of East Timor
Mixed languages
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