Sawi or Sawuy is a
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
of the
Sawi people
The Sawi or Sawuy are an ethnic group of South Papua, Indonesia. They were known to be cannibalistic headhunters as recently as the 1950s. They speak the Sawi language, which belongs to the Awyu language family.
Since then, many of Sawi have c ...
of the
Trans–New Guinea phylum spoken in
sago
Sago () is a starch extracted from the pith, or spongy core tissue, of various tropical palm stems, especially those of ''Metroxylon sagu''. It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands, where it is c ...
swamps in the southwestern parts of the Indonesian province of
Papua. Of the neighboring languages, it is most closely related to the
Awyu languages
The Awyu languages are a cluster of Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It ...
to the east.
[Voorhoeve 1971: 89-90.]
Sawi is an
inflecting language and uses both inflections of the stem and suffixes to indicate person, number, and tense.
References
External links
* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Sawi
Languages of Western New Guinea
Greater Awyu languages
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