Sawi or Sawuy is a
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
of the
Sawi people
The Sawi or Sawuy are a tribal people of Western New Guinea, 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 ...
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 and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring isl ...
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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