The Sawai language (also Weda) is a
South Halmahera language of the
Austronesian language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...
spoken in the
Weda and Gane Timor districts of southern
Halmahera
Halmahera, formerly known as Jilolo, Gilolo, or Jailolo, is the largest island in the Maluku Islands. It is part of the North Maluku Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia, and Sofifi, the capital of the province, is located on the west coa ...
, northern
Maluku Province
Maluku is located in Eastern Indonesia and geographically located in West-Melanesia, between Sulawesi and Western New Guinea, and comprises the central and southern regions of the Maluku Islands. It is directly adjacent to North Maluku, South ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
. There are approximately 12,000 speakers.
Sounds
Below is a description of the Kobe dialect of Sawai spoken in the villages of
Lelilef Woyebulan and
Kobe Peplis, as well as from Whistler (1995).
Consonants
Sawai has 15
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
s:
Vowels
Sawai has eight
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
s:
Syllable
Sawai has the following syllable structure:
: (C)(C)V(C)
Examples:
References
Bibliography
* Burquest, Donald A.; & Laidig, Wyn D. (Eds.). (1992). ''Phonological studies in four languages of Maluku''. The Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington publications in linguistics (No. 108). Dallas: The Summer Institute of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Arlington, and Pattimura University. .
* Whistler, Ronald. (1992). Phonology of Sawai. In D. A. Burquest & W. D. Laidig (Eds.), ''Phonological studies in four languages of Maluku'' (pp. 7–32). Dallas: The Summer Institute of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Arlington, and Pattimura University.
* Whistler, Ronald; & Whistler, Jacqui. (1995). Sawai: Introduction and wordlist. In D. T. Tryon (Ed.), ''Comparative Austronesian dictionary: An introduction to Austronesian studies'' (part 1: fascicle 1, pp. 659–65). Trends in linguistics, Documentation (No. 10). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
{{Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages
South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages
Languages of Indonesia
Halmahera