West Damar, or ''North Damar'', is an Austronesian language of Damar Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. In spite of rather low cognacy rates with its neighboring languages, it can be classified as part of the Babar languages based on qualitative evidence.
[Aone van Engelenhoven. 2010. Tentatively locating West-Damar among the languages of Southwest Maluku. In Chlenova, Svetlana and Fedorchuk, Artem (eds.), ''Studia Anthropologica: a Festschrift in Honor of Michael Chlenov'', 297-326. Moscow-Jerusalem: Gesharim.]
It is only spoken in the village of Batumerah,
located on the north-western part of Damar.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary list:
Sample sentences
- Are you ill?
- Yes, I have a headache.
- The mountain Mount Binaiya, Binaya is the highest at the Seram island.
See also
*East Damar language
References
Further reading
*Michael Chlenov & Svetlana Chlenova, 2006. "West Damar language or Damar-Batumerah, an isolate in South-Eastern Indonesia." ''Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics,'' 17–20 January 2006, Palawan, Philippine
Babar languages
Languages of the Maluku Islands
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