Porome, also known as Kibiri, is a

Papuan language The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a ...

of southern

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 ...

Classification

Porome was classified as a

language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...

Stephen Wurm Stephen Adolphe Wurm (, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist. Early life Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky. ...

. Although Malcolm Ross linked it to the

Kiwaian languages The Kiwaian languages form a language family of New Guinea. They are a dialect cluster of half a dozen closely related languages. They are grammatically divergent from the Trans–New Guinea languages, and typically have singular, dual, trial, an ...

, there is no evidence for a connection apart from the pronouns 1sg ''amo'' and 2sg ''do'' (cf. proto-Kiwaian *mo and *oro).

Distribution

There are over a thousand speakers in ''Babaguina'' (), ''Doibo'' (), ''Ero'' (), ''Paile'', ''Tipeowo'', and ''Wowa'' () villages in

West Kikori Rural LLG West Kikori Rural LLG is a local-level governments of Papua New Guinea, local-level government (LLG) of Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea. Kiwaian languages are spoken in the LLG. Wards *01. Haivaro *02. Moka (Minanibai language speakers) *03. Koma ...

and East Kikori Rural LLG of

Gulf Province Gulf Province is a province of Papua New Guinea located on the southern coast. The provincial capital is Kerema. The 34,472 km2 province is dominated by mountains, lowland river deltas, and grassland flood plains. In Gulf Province, the Kiko ...

, near the

Aird Hills Aird may refer to: People *Aird (surname), shared by several people Places Northern Ireland * Aird, County Antrim, a townland Scotland * Aird, Dumfries and Galloway * Aird, Inverness, a district of the county of Inverness *Aird, Lewis (''Aird An ...

and

Kikori River The Kikori River is a major river in southern Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea. The river has a total length of and flows southeast into the Gulf of Papua, with its delta at the head of the gulf. The settlement of Kikori lies on the ...

tributaries.

Phonology

Porome has 9 native consonants. /s/ occurs in loanwords. There are no

glottal consonant Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants ...

s.Petterson, Robert. 2019.
Interesting Features of Porome: An Isolate Language of PNG
'. Paper presented at the LSPNG 2019 Conference. 30pp. : There are five vowels, which are /a, e, i, o, u/. Like the surrounding languages, Porome is a tonal language. It has 5 tones. *High-level: ''kóí'' ‘cloth’ *Low-level: ''kòì'' ‘selfish’ *Rising: ''mèrí'' ‘road’ *Falling: ''mérì'' ‘

pandanus ''Pandanus'' is a genus of monocots with about 578 accepted species. They are palm-like, dioecious trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics and subtropics. Common names include pandan, screw palm and screw pine. The genus is classified ...

’ *Peaking: ''pàkúmì'' ‘feather’

Pronouns

The independent pronouns and subject suffixes to the verb are as follows: :

Vocabulary

Selected Porome vocabulary from Petterson (2010):Petterson, Robert. 2010. ''Porome Daporo Avea Buka = Porome Language Picture Dictionary''.

Ukarumpa Ukarumpa is an intentional international community that is the main centre for SIL-PNG, located in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. It lies approximately by road from Kainantu in the Aiyura Valley. The population consists of ...

: SIL-PNG.

Body parts

Numerals

Village and society

Nature and environment

Plants

Animals

Comparison

Lexical comparison of Porome with neighboring languages: : Comparison of Porome's phonological inventory with those of neighboring languages: :

References

* {{Language families Languages of Gulf Province Papuan languages Language isolates of New Guinea