The Ambai language is an
Austronesian language
The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...
spoken in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
n New Guinea (
Papua Province), mostly on the
Ambai Islands
Ambai () are the archipelago or the chain of islands off the southern coast of Yapen Island, in Cenderawasih Bay and Papua Province in Western New Guinea, northeastern Indonesia.
Islands
The archipelago has five main islands, including Ambai an ...
as well as the southern part of
Yapen Island
Yapen (also Japen, Jobi) is an island of Papua (province), Papua, Indonesia. The Yapen Strait separates Yapen and the Biak Islands to the north. It is in Cenderawasih Bay off the north-western coast of the island of New Guinea. To the west is ...
.
The number of speakers is estimated to be 10,000. Dialects are Randawaya, Ambai (Wadapi-Laut), and Manawi.
Phonology
Ambai has 19 consonants and 6 vowels, shown on the tables below.
Morphology
Pronouns
All pronouns in Ambai mark for
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
,
person
A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations suc ...
and
clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the address ...
(in first person).
The following bound pronouns are obligatorily added as affixes to the verb to stand as the subject of the sentence. Every verb in Ambai takes a subject, even if it is a 'dummy' third-person pronoun.
The following pronouns are independent and are more restricted in use. They do not appear as subjects – since the subject is marked already on the verb – but can appear as objects, in prepositional phrases and in subordinate clauses. Some verbs allow the object pronoun to be omitted.
Examples of pronouns used in everyday language:
References
Further reading
* P.J. Silzer ''Ambai, an Austronesian Language of Irian Jaya, Indonesia'',
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...
, 1983.
External links
The Ambai Language Documentation Page''A Short Description of Ambai Grammar'', by Ariel Gutman ''A Grammar Sketch of Ambai'', by Fannie St-Pierre-Tanguay
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ambai Language
South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages
Languages of Western New Guinea
Ambai Islands
Cenderawasih Bay
Papua (province) culture