The Anim or Fly River languages are a language family in south-central New Guinea established by Usher & Suter (2015).
[Timothy Usher and Edgar Suter (2015) "The Anim Languages of Southern New Guinea". ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 54:110–142] The names of the family derive from the
Fly River
The Fly River is the third longest river in the island of New Guinea, after the Sepik River and Mamberamo River, with a total length of and the largest by volume of discharge in Oceania, the largest in the world without a single dam in its ca ...
and from the Proto-Anim word *anim 'people'.
Languages
The 17 Anim languages belong to the following four subfamilies:
[
* Inland Gulf
* Tirio (Lower Fly River)
* Boazi (Lake Murray)
* Marind (Marind–Yaqai)
The moribund ]Abom language
Abom is a nearly extinct language spoken in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. According to a 2002 census, only 15 people still speak this language. All of the speakers are older adults. Middle-aged adults have some understanding of it, bu ...
, previously considered a member of the Tirio family, is of uncertain classification, possibly Trans–New Guinea, but does not appear to be Anim. The extinct Karami language
Karami is an extinct and unclassified Papuan language of southern Papua New Guinea. It is attested from only a short word list, which include many loans from Foia Foia.Usher, TimothyInland Gulf family ''New Guinea World''.
Locations
According t ...
, attested only in a short word list and previously assigned to the Inland Gulf family, defies classification (Usher and Suter 2015).
Anim languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below.
Reconstruction
Phonemes
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:[Timothy Usher & Edgar Suter]
Proto–Fly River
''New Guinea World''.
:
Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u.
Pronouns
Proto-Anim pronouns (Usher and Suter 2015):