The Mombum languages, also known as the Komolom or Muli Strait languages, are a pair of

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive Language family, family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as Western New Guinea, parts of Indone ...

, Mombum (Komolom) and Koneraw, spoken on Komolom Island just off Yos Sudarso Island, and on the southern coast of Yos Sudarso Island, respectively, on the southern coast of New Guinea. Komolom Island is at the southern end of the Muli Strait.New Guinea World, Muli Strait
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History of classification

Mombum was first classified as a branch isolate of the

Central and South New Guinea languages The Central and South New Guinea languages (CSNG) are a proposed language family, family of Trans–New Guinea languages (TNG). They were part of Voorhoeve & McElhanon's original TNG proposal, but have been reduced in scope by half (nine familie ...

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. ...

's 1975 expansion for Trans–New Guinea, a position tentatively maintained by Malcolm Ross, though he cannot tell if the similarities are shared innovations or retentions from proto-TNG. Usher instead links them to the

Asmat languages Asmat is a Papuan language cluster of South Papua South Papua, officially the South Papua Province (), is an Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province located in the southern portion of Western New Guinea, Papua, following the borders of t ...

. Koneraw is clearly related to Mombum, but was overlooked by early classifications. Along with the

Kolopom languages The Kolopom languages are a language family, family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm (1975) and of Malcolm Ross (linguist), Malcolm Ross (2005). Along with the Mombum languages, they are the languages spoken ...

, they are the languages spoken on Yos Sudarso Island (Kolopom Island). Noting insufficient evidence, Pawley and Hammarström (2018), who refer to the languages as the ''Komolom'' branch, tentatively leave it as unclassified rather than as part of Trans-New Guinea.

Pronouns

Pronouns are: :

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from McElhanon & Voorhoeve (1970) and Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database. The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. ''wonderam'', ''wondrum'' for “head”) or not (e.g. ''iŋar'', ''itöx'' for “bone”). :

References

External links

* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Proto–Muli Strait
{{Papuan languages Languages of Indonesia Languages of Western New Guinea Asmat–Mombum languages