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Eastern Trans-Fly

New Guinea and Pacific Language Families

The Eastern Trans-Fly, or Oriomo, languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages spoken on the Oriomo Plateau in Papua New Guinea's Western Province, with one member, Meriam, also called Meryam Mir, spoken across the border in Australia's Torres Strait Islands. The family comprises four languages with a combined population of roughly 7,250 speakers: Wipi, also called Gidra, with about 3,500, Bine with about 2,000, Gizrra with about 1,050, and Meriam with about 700. The languages were originally grouped within Stephen Wurm's broader Trans-Fly and Trans-New Guinea proposals, but some linguists now retain Eastern Trans-Fly as an independent family.

Facts
Region
Oriomo Plateau, west of the Fly River, Papua New Guinea 1
One constituent language, Meriam, is spoken on islands within Australia’s national borders (Torres Strait), per the source’s own language list.
Proto-Language Status
Partially reconstructed: Malcolm Ross reconstructed pronoun forms for proto-Eastern Trans-Fly from comparative evidence. 1
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Eastern Trans-Fly Languages
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section
    The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo) languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages spoken in the Oriomo Plateau to the west of the Fly River in New Guinea.
  • Pronouns section
    The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Eastern Trans-Fly are:
View the Source
Wikidata: Eastern Trans-Fly
Wikidata Q5330530, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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