Yetfa and Biksi (Biaksi; Inisine
) are dialects of a language spoken in Jetfa District,
Papua,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
, and across the border in
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 ...
. It is a trade language spoken in West Papua up to the PNG border.
According to Hammarström (2008), it is being passed on to children and is not in immediate danger.
External relationships
Yetfa is not close to other languages. Ross (2005), following Laycock & Z’Graggen (1975), places Biksi in its own branch of the
Sepik
The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provinces of Sandaun (formerly West Se ...
family, but there is little data to base a classification on. The similarities noted by Laycock are sporadic and may simply be loans; Ross based his classification on pronouns, but they are dissimilar enough for the connection to be uncertain. Usher found it to be a Southern
Pauwasi language. Foley (2018) classifies it as a
language isolate.
Foley (2018b: 295-296) notes that first person pronoun and third-person singular masculine pronoun in Yetfa match pronouns found in
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 have ...
, with some resemblances such as ''nim'' ‘louse’ with proto-Sepik *nim ‘louse’, and ''wal'' ‘ear’ with proto-Sepik *wan. However, Foley (2018b) considers the evidence linking Yetfa to the Sepik family to be insufficient, thus classifying Yetfa as a
language isolate until further evidence can be found.
Pronouns
Pronouns from Ross (2005):
:
Pronouns from Kim (2005), as quoted in Foley (2018):
:
Basic vocabulary
Basic vocabulary of Yetfa from Kim (2006), quoted in
Foley (2018):
:
The following basic vocabulary words are from Conrad & Dye (1975) and Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
:
Sentences
There is very little sentence data for Yetfa. Some of the few documented Yetfa sentences are:
The Yetfa tense suffix -''(y)o'' is also present in
Tofanma.
References
External links
Yetfa word list at TransNewGuinea.org
{{authority control
Languages of western New Guinea
Languages of Papua New Guinea
South Pauwasi languages