The Baining languages are a small
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...
spoken by the
Baining people on the
Gazelle Peninsula of
New Britain in
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
. They appear to be related to the neighboring
Taulil–Butam languages, which diffused from
New Ireland.
Languages
The languages are:
*
Mali
Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...
(2,200 speakers)
*
Qaqet (6,400 speakers)
*
Kairak (900 speakers)
*
Simbali (450 speakers)
*
Ura (1,900 speakers)
Extinct
Makolkol neighbored the (other) Baining languages to their southwest but is unattested.
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from SIL field notes (1970, 1971, 1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.
The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. ''sʌdᶺm'', ''asdɛmgi'' for “ear”) or not (e.g. ''tʌƀəřʌk'', ''it'' for “louse”).
:
References
{{Papuan languages
East New Britain languages
Languages of East New Britain Province