The Mailuan or Cloudy Bay languages are a small family of
Trans–New Guinea languages
Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands ‒ corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as parts of Indonesia.
Trans–New Guinea is the third-la ...
spoken around
Cloudy Bay
Te Koko-o-Kupe / Cloudy Bay is located at the northeast of New Zealand's South Island, to the south of the Marlborough Sounds and north of Clifford Bay. In August 2014, the name Cloudy Bay, given by Captain Cook in 1770, was officially altered ...
in the "
Bird's Tail
The Papuan Peninsula, also known as the Bird's Tail Peninsula, is a large peninsula in Papua New Guinea, southeast of the city of Lae, that makes up the southeastern portion of the island of New Guinea. The peninsula is the easternmost extent of th ...
" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are classified within the
Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea.
Languages
The languages, which all share about half of their vocabulary, are,
*
Domu
Xen (pronounced ) is a type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was
originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory ...
,
Binahari–Binahari-Ma,
Morawa,
Mailu (Magi),
Laua
Bauwaki–O'oku is closely related to the Mailuan languages.
Classification
Dutton (1971) said Bauwaki was a link to the
Yareban languages
The Yareban or Musa River languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken near the Musa River in the "Bird's Tail" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are classified within the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans&n ...
. It has greater lexical similarity with
Aneme Wake (Yareban) than the closest Mailuan language, Domu. Usher (2020) classifies Mailuan, Bauwaki and Yareban together.
[
Magi shows evidence of ]language shift
Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are percei ...
from an Oceanic language in many Oceanic words.
Pronouns
Usher (2020) reconstructs the proto-Mailuan–Yareban pronouns as:[New Guinea World, Owen Stanley Range]
/ref>
:
Ross (1995) reconstructs the Mailuan pronouns as:
:
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from Thomson (1975) and various SIL field notes, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
Additional word lists can be found in Ray (1938).[Ray, Sidney H. 1938. The languages of the Eastern and South-Eastern Division of Papua. ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland'' 68: 153–208.]
Evolution
Mailuan reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:cassowary
Cassowaries ( tpi, muruk, id, kasuari) are flightless birds of the genus ''Casuarius'' in the order Casuariiformes. They are classified as ratites (flightless birds without a keel on their sternum bones) and are native to the tropical ...
’ < *ku(y)a
Bauwaki language
Bauwaki (Bawaki) is a Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around ...
:
*''baba'' ‘father’ < *mbapa
*''idi'' ‘hair’ < *iti *''(ine) ibi'' ‘name’ < *imbi
*''iini''- ‘sleep’ < *kin(i,u)-
References
*
{{Papuan languages
Mailu–Yareban languages
Languages of Central Province (Papua New Guinea)