Yetfa and Biksi (Biaksi; Inisine) are dialects of a language spoken in Jetfa District, Papua,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, and across the border in

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 ...

. It is a trade language spoken in West Papua up to the PNG border. According to Hammarström (2008), it is being passed on to children and is not in immediate danger.

External relationships

Yetfa is not close to other languages. Ross (2005), following Laycock & Z’Graggen (1975), places Biksi in its own branch of the

Sepik The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provinces of Sandaun (formerly West Se ...

family, but there is little data to base a classification on. The similarities noted by Laycock are sporadic and may simply be loans; Ross based his classification on pronouns, but they are dissimilar enough for the connection to be uncertain. Usher found it to be a Southern Pauwasi language. Foley (2018) classifies it as a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...

. Foley (2018b: 295-296) notes that first person pronoun and third-person singular masculine pronoun in Yetfa match pronouns found in

Sepik languages The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to have ...

, with some resemblances such as ''nim'' ‘louse’ with proto-Sepik *nim ‘louse’, and ''wal'' ‘ear’ with proto-Sepik *wan. However, Foley (2018b) considers the evidence linking Yetfa to the Sepik family to be insufficient, thus classifying Yetfa as a

until further evidence can be found.

Pronouns

Pronouns from Ross (2005): : Pronouns from Kim (2005), as quoted in Foley (2018): :

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of Yetfa from Kim (2006), quoted in Foley (2018): : The following basic vocabulary words are from Conrad & Dye (1975) and Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: :

Sentences

There is very little sentence data for Yetfa. Some of the few documented Yetfa sentences are: The Yetfa tense suffix -''(y)o'' is also present in Tofanma.

References

External links

Yetfa word list at TransNewGuinea.org
{{authority control Languages of western New Guinea Languages of Papua New Guinea South Pauwasi languages