The Leonhard Schultze (Leonard Schultze) or Walio–Papi languages are a proposed
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
of about 6
Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...
spoken in the
Sepik river basin of northern
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
. They are spoken along the border region of
East Sepik Province
East Sepik is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Wewak. East Sepik has an estimated population of 450,530 people (2011 census) and is 43,426 km square in size. Its density is 10.4 people per square kilometer.
History
Cherubim D ...
and
Sandaun Province
Sandaun Province (formerly West Sepik Province) is the northwesternmost mainland Provinces of Papua New Guinea, province of Papua New Guinea (also known as home of the sunset). It covers an area of 35,920 km2 (13868 m2) and has a population ...
, just to the south of the
Iwam languages
The Iwam languages are a small family of two clearly related languages, May River Iwam and Sepik Iwam are generally classified among the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea; Malcolm Ross places them in an Upper Sepik branch of that fa ...
.
The languages are named after the
Leonhard Schultze River, which is in turn named after German anthropologist
Leonhard Schultze-Jena.
Languages
The Leonard Schultze languages are:
* Leonard Schultze languages
**
Walio languages
The Walio languages are a small family of clearly related languages,
: Walio, Pei, Yawiyo, and Tuwari.
However, they are not close: Walio and Yawiyo have only a 12% lexical similarity. They are frequently classified among the Sepik languages ...
***
Walio
***
Pei
***
Yawiyo
***
Tuwari
**
Papi–Asaba languages
The Papi and Asaba languages form a small family of two somewhat distantly related languages of northern Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises ...
***
Papi
***
Suarmin
Classification
The Leonhard Schultze languages were traditionally classified by
Laycock and Z'graggen (1975) as part of the
Sepik language family.
Foley (2018) classifies the Leonhard Schultze languages separately as an independent language family rather than as part of the
Sepik languages
The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a language family, family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik River, Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than prese ...
(as in previous classifications proposed by others).
However, this classification is not accepted by Glottolog, which splits up the Walio and Papi branches and considers them each to be a primary language family.
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from Conrad and Dye (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.
The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. ''tiᵽo'', ''tipafu'' for “head”) or not (e.g. ''aᵽayo'', ''toefahewa'' for “skin”).
:
References
{{language families
Sepik languages
Languages of Momase Region