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Kiwaian

New Guinea and Pacific Language Families

The Kiwaian languages form a family of New Guinea, a dialect cluster of about half a dozen closely related languages spoken in southwest Papua New Guinea, including Kiwai, with its Southern, Island and Northeast varieties, Bamu, Kerewo, Morigi and Waboda. They are grammatically divergent from the Trans-New Guinea languages and typically distinguish singular, dual, trial and plural pronouns.

Facts
Region
Fly River Delta area, Papua New Guinea 1
Proto-Language Status
Reconstructed: Timothy Usher (2020) reconstructed Proto-Kiwai consonant phonemes, pronouns and basic vocabulary. 1
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Kiwaian Languages
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Further reading section (Wurm 1951 title)
    Studies in the Kiwai Languages, Fly Delta, Papua, New Guinea
  • Proto-language, Phonemes section
    Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
View the Source
Wikidata: Kiwaian
Wikidata Q338449, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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