The Suabo or Inanwatan is a Papuan language of
Southwest Papua
Southwest Papua (; ) is the 38th provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia to be created, and was split off from West Papua (province), West Papua on 8 December 2022. Despite being named "southwest", this is actually a misnomer and this prov ...
. It is often classified in the
South Bird's Head language family, but may alternatively form an independent language family together with
Duriankere.
Overview
Inanwatan is primarily spoken in the village of
Inanwatan,
South Sorong Regency on the south coast of the
Bird's Head Peninsula
The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: , , meaning Bird's Head in Indonesian and Dutch) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai'') is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indones ...
, but also in the village of
Seget,
Sorong Regency
Sorong Regency () is a regency of the Southwest Papua province of Indonesia. It covers an area of 13,075.28 km2, and had a population of 70,619 at the 2010 Census,Biro Pusat Statistik, Jakarta, 2011. and 118,679 at the 2020 Census;Badan Pusa ...
on the western tip of the peninsula, as well as by a community in the Jalan Ferry area of the city of
Sorong
Sorong is the largest city and the capital of the Indonesian province of Southwest Papua. The city is located on the western tip of the island of New Guinea with its only land borders being with Sorong Regency. It is the gateway to Indonesia ...
.
Inanwatan is
endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...
: de Vries reports in 2004 that it was mostly people over 50 years of age who speak it fluently, and that the newest generation do not know it. According to his estimate, Inanwatan has 800 or fewer speakers, out of an ethnic population of about 3,000. The language is not a central component of the identity of the people, who identify more strongly with the smaller descent groups.
The language is also known under the names ''Bira'', ''Suabo'', ''Iagu'' and ''Mirabo'',
while the Inanwatan themselves most commonly refer to it as 'our language'. It is most closely related to the
Duriankari language.
Phonology
* The consonant /n/ has the allophone
intervocalically.
* The consonant /ɸ/ has the allophones
between any vowel and any back vowel /o/ or /u/, and
�between any vowel and any non-back vowel.
* The vowels /e/ and /a/ are, rarely, reduced to
�in unstressed syllables.
Additionally, the following diphthongs are present: /ai/, /ae/, /au/, /ao/, /ou/.
Stress is phonemic and unpredictable.
[
]
Grammar
Like the Romance languages
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
, Inanwatan distinguishes masculine and feminine grammatical gender
In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...
s. Inanwatan masculine nouns end in the front vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...
s -''i'' and -''e'', and feminine nouns end in non-front vowels -''u, -o, -a''. Maybrat, on the other hand, uses concord prefixes instead of suffixes to mark gender.
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
{{South Bird's Head languages
Inanwatan–Duriankere languages