This article helps us understand what language do West Papua people speak. As a big region, there are some local languages that people use in West Papua. The best known is Ternate due to its role as a trader.
Yet, we can find other languages spoken here. The following are some brief explanations about the West Papua language.
History
From the history, the experts link the languages from the West Bird’s Head and North Halmahera. Some found that most are non-Austronesian languages from Timor. Meanwhile, some others traced it as from Great Andaman and Aru.
Due to the location, the West Papuan languages include Austronesian, Trans-New Guinea, and Andamanese. As time passed, the West Papuan languages family grouped the local languages into Yawa, Abun, Maybrat, Amberbaken, etc.
In the Bird’s Head region, people unify themselves using Abun and Maybrat. Besides, some use West Bird’s Head language commonly spoken in small families. Unfortunately, only fewer languages have proper documentation.
Apart from that, Yawa and East Bird’s Head languages are commonly spoken in the West Papua region. Through a research study, some small families use this language in their daily activities.
Phonology and Word Order
The studies also find some similarities between phonology and word order of the local languages. It helps us know better what language do West Papua people speak.
The phonetic system is simple, and there are only a few phonemes. Some languages even include the simplest language in the world.
The articulation only occurs in three places, like dental, labial, and velar. Yet, experts mention that many other sounds are rare, including fricative. They contrast the rarely used r and l.
Additionally, the vowels and lexical tones are also quite similar because of their geographical location. The languages have a similar vowel system that consists of a, i, u, e, and o, although some others have vowels up to eight. So, those criteria make the West Papua languages.
The people make the language become diverse and grow well. Through trading, the West Papua languages are all over the island. However, the basic vocabulary allows new learners to take some time to understand it better.
Understanding Abun Language
The Abun language is located in the north of the Bird’s Head Peninsula. This language settled among others, such as Amberbaken, or also known as Mpur, Moi, and Karon Dori.
The dialects are mutually intelligible. However, the number of users has become decreasing because the geographic location has a greater distance.
The name Abun comes from the people that consist of A and Bun. A means language and bun means bush or jungle. So, it means the bush or jungle language.
Most Abun speakers are the Biak people. They exist near the coast and did not move out from their tribal homelands. Those people do not leave their area until now.
In the closest primary town like Sorong, people are still familiar with this language. The language may not have vast growth, but it gets significant influence from the surrounding languages.
Compared to Indonesian, some other verbs share similarities, including the common one. The Abun lexical item offers users the same idea as Indonesian as it has the same prefixes forms.
Mpur Language in Brief
The Mpur is also popular as Amberbaken or Ekware. Others know the name as Kebar or Dewambre. This language is spoken only around Mpur and Amberbaken districts.
d speakers, it is called a language isolate. It means that Mpur can not be classified into larger language families. From here, we know that Mpur has no close relation to any other language, including in what language do West Papua people speak.
