Keuw (Keu, Kehu) is an

unclassified Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know ...

language of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

. Keuw is spoken in a swampy lowland region along the Poronai River in Keuw village (kampung) of Wapoga District,

Nabire Regency Nabire Regency is one of the regencies (''kabupaten'') in the Indonesian province of Central Papua. It covers an area of 12,010.65 km2, and had a population of 129,893 at the 2010 Census and 169,136 at the 2020 Census, comprising 87,688 males and 8 ...

, Papua province, Indonesia. According to oral folklore, the Keuw were originally from Woisaru, and then moved to Sanawado, which may be locations in Wapoga District.

Classification

Mark Donohue (2007) said that Kehu is "probably a

Geelvink Bay language The East Geelvink Bay or East Cenderawasih languages are a language family of a dozen Papuan languages along the eastern coast of Geelvink Bay in Indonesian Papua, which is also known as Sarera Bay or Cenderawasih. Languages The East Geelvink ...

, but no one knows enough about those languages, systematically, to say this with confidence for

ny of them NY most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the Northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York NY, Ny or ny may also refer to: Places * North Yorkshir ...

beyond Barapasi, T(ar)unggare and Bauzi." Timothy Usher (2018) classifies it as a Lakes Plain language, closest to Awera and Rasawa–

Saponi The Saponi or Sappony are a Native American tribe historically based in the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia.Raymond D. DeMaillie, "Tutelo and Neighboring Groups," pages 286–87. They spoke a Siouan language, related to the languages of ...

. According to Foley, based on some lexical and phonological similarities, Keuw may possibly share a deep relationship with the Lakes Plain languages. Palmer (2018) treats Keuw as a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...

Phonology

Phonology of Keuw from Kamholz (2012), quoted in Foley (2018):Kamholz, David. 2012. The Keuw isolate: preliminary materials and classification. ''Language and Linguistics in Melanesia Special Issue: History, Contact and Classification of Papuan Languages'': 243–268.

Consonants

Keuw has ten consonants.

Vowels

Keuw has five vowels.

Tone

Keuw has contrastive tone. Some

minimal pair In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate ...

s demonstrating phonemic tonal contrasts: *''áalìyò'' ‘tongue’, ''áalíyò'' ‘house’ *''kíilyô'' ‘possum’, ''kíilyò'' ‘arrow’ *''úukyò'' ‘grandfather’, ''úunyô'' ‘woman’

Syntax

Keuw has

SOV word order SOV may refer to: * SOV, Service Operations Vessel * SOV, a former ticker symbol for Sovereign Bank * SOV, a legal cryptocurrency created by the Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 of the Republic of the Marshall Islands * SOV, the National Rail statio ...

, as exemplified by the sentence below. The morphemic suffixes remain unglossed.

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of Keuw from Kamholz (2012), quoted in Foley (2018): : The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database: :

References

External links

Keuw field recordings
{{Papuan languages Endangered languages Language isolates of New Guinea Endangered language isolates Wapoga languages Tonal languages