The Sikka language or Sikkanese, also known as Sika, is spoken by around 180,000 people of the Sika

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Administratively, it forms the largest island in the East Nusa Tenggara Province. The area is 14,250 km2. Including Komodo and Rinca islands ...

island in

East Nusa Tenggara East Nusa Tenggara (; ) is the southernmost province of Indonesia. It comprises the eastern portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, facing the Indian Ocean in the south and the Flores Sea in the north, with a total land area of 47,238.07 km2. It cons ...

province,

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, ...

. It is a member of the

Central Malayo-Polynesian The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (CMP) are a proposed branch in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding ...

branch of the

Austronesian language family The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

. Sikka is notable for being one of the few languages which contain a non-

allophonic In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...

labiodental flap In phonetics, the voiced labiodental flap is a speech sound found primarily in languages of Central Africa, such as Kera and Mangbetu. It has also been reported in the Austronesian language Sika. It is one of the few non- rhotic flaps. The ...

. Like many other languages in eastern Indonesia, it shows evidence of having a Papuan (non-Austronesian)

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, but in the case of Sika, this includes extreme morphological simplification and about 20% lexical replacement in basic vocabulary. It has been hypothesized that the Austronesian languages in that area could be descendants of a creole language, resulting from the intrusion of Austronesian languages into eastern Indonesia. Sika has at least three recognized dialects: * ''Sikka Natar'', which is generally perceived in the region to be the most refined and most prestigious of the Sika speech varieties. * ''Sara Krowe'', spoken in the central hills of Sika-speaking people. * ''Ata Tana 'Ai'' or ''Sara Tana 'Ai'', used by both outsiders and insiders to refer to the people and language of the region; it is also used as a ritual language.

Phonology

Consonants

Sika has the following consonant phonemes:

Vowels

Sika has the following vowel phonemes:

References

Flores-Lembata languages Languages of Indonesia {{au-lang-stub