Suki is a Gogodala-Suki language spoken by about 3500 people several miles inland along the

Fly River The Fly River is the third longest river in the island of New Guinea, after the Sepik River and Mamberamo River, with a total length of and the largest by volume of discharge in Oceania, the largest in the world without a single dam in its ca ...

in southwestern

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

Overview

Suki is primarily spoken in six villages of the Western Province: Gwaku (), Iwewi, Ewe, Gwibaku (), Duru (), and Isala.Wurm, S.A. (1977) Suki is genetically related to the three other languages of the Gogodala–Suki stock, Gogodala,

Ali ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب; 600 – 661 CE) was the last of four Rightly Guided Caliphs to rule Islam (r. 656 – 661) immediately after the death of Muhammad, and he was the first Shia Imam ...

, and Walua, but is considered a family-level isolate within this group.Voorhoeve, C.L. (1970) As with many

Papuan languages 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 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...

, there are very few published materials on Suki. The literacy rate in Suki is 5-15%, English is the language of instruction in schools and

Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of Motu, from the Austronesian l ...

is also spoken.Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (2005)

Alternate names

Suki is also known as Wiram and was earlier known as Nausaku, after one of the villages where Suki was spoken. The village no longer exists, but was located near present-day Isala.

Phonology

The

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

of Suki is relatively simple. It has a five-vowel system, much like many of the non-

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...

languages of Papua New Guinea. The consonant system is also fairly simple, containing 13

phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

. The tables below list the phonemes and their

allophones In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...

; allophones are given in parentheses.

Consonants

Vowels

Orthography

Suki is written using the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greece, Greek city of Cumae, in southe ...

without

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

. It follows English conventions of capitalizing proper names and the first words of sentences. Punctuation is mostly as in English, though question marks and exclamation points are not used. The following letters are used to write Suki: a b d e g i k m n o p r s t u w y z. The letters w and y are used both as consonants and vowels.

Morphology

Suki is an

agglutinating language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remai ...

primarily via suffixing, though a small number of prefixes have been attested. Both nouns and verbs can take a large number of suffixes. The verbal structure is as follows, where items in parentheses are optional: verb root + (causative suffix) + (person-object suffix) + (transitive suffix) + tense suffix + person-number suffix. The person suffixes are as follows:

Pronouns

The pronoun system of Suki is somewhat unusual in the world, though quite typical for a language of New Guinea, in that the pronouns for 2nd singular and 1st plural are

homophonous A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...

. Just like the nouns, the pronouns can also take most case affixes.

Numerals

There are four numerals native to Suki, though only two

morphemes A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

to express these and perhaps only one of them is original to the language. Voorhoeve states that Suki seems to have borrowed ''menes'' (two) from the neighboring Zimakani people. Numerals can also take a limited number of case affixes. In writing, numerals one through four are spelled out, while numerals above four are written with

Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as ...

.The New Testament in Suki (1981)

Syntax

Suki is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language.

References

Bibliography

*Capell, A. A Survey of New Guinea Languages. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1969, SBN 424054205 *Capell, Arthur. A Linguistic Survey of the South-Western Pacific. South Pacific Commission. Technical Paper No. 136. Nouméa: South Pacific Commission, 1962. *McElhanon, K.A., and C.L. Voorhoeve, eds. The Trans–New Guinea Phylum: Explorations in Deep-Level Genetic Relationships. Vol. B #16. Sydney: The Australian National University, 1970. *Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". in Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide, Jack Golson, eds.. Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. . OCLC 67292782 *The New Testament in Suki / Godte Gi Amkari Titrum Ine. Port Moresby: The Bible Society of Papua New Guinea 1981, *Voorhoeve, C.L., “Some Notes on the Suki-Gogodala Subgroup of the Central and South New Guinea Phylum.” in Wurm, S.A., and D.C. Laycock, eds. Pacific Linguistic Studies in Honour of Arthur Capell. Vol. Series C #13: The Australian National University, 1970, *Wurm, S.A., ed. New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study. Vol. 1. Canberra: Australian National University, 1977, {{ISBN, 0-85883-132-5

External links

Ethnologue map of Suki speaking areaInformation on Papuan Languages
Languages of Papua New Guinea Gogodala–Suki languages