Amal is a language spoken along the border of
Sandaun Province
Sandaun Province (formerly West Sepik Province) is the northwesternmost mainland Provinces of Papua New Guinea, province of Papua New Guinea. It covers an area of 35,920 km2 (13868 m2) and has a population of 248,411 (2011 census). The capita ...
and
East Sepik Province
East Sepik is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Wewak. East Sepik has an estimated population of 433,481 people (2010 census) and is 43,426 km square in size.
History
Cherubim Dambui was appointed as East Sepik's first premier b ...
,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, along the
Wagana River near the confluence with Wanibe Creek.
Foley (2018) classifies Amal as a primary branch of the
Sepik languages
The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to ha ...
, though it is quite close to
Kalou.
Pronouns
Pronouns are:
:
Cognates
Amal cognates with
Sepik languages
The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to ha ...
are:
*''tal'' ‘woman’
*''yan'' ‘child’
*''lal'' ‘tongue’ < proto-Sepik *ta(w)r
*''mi'' ‘breast’ < proto-Sepik *muk
*''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
The Tama languages are a small family of three clusters of closely related languages of northern Papua New Guinea, spoken just to the south of Nuku town in eastern Sandaun Province. They are classified as subgroup of the Sepik languages. ''Tama ...
, 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:
:
References
{{Languages of Papua New Guinea
Yellow–Wanibe languages
Languages of Sandaun Province
Languages of East Sepik Province