Tayap, also spelled Taiap and also called Gapun after the village where it is spoken, is an endangered Papuan language used by fewer than 50 people in Gapun village, Marienberg Rural LLG, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, just south of the Sepik River mouth, with a few more speakers in the neighboring villages of Wongan and Watam. Its family relationship is disputed: Don Kulick and Angela Terrill concluded it may be a language isolate unrelated to the neighboring Lower Sepik languages, a more distant link to the Torricelli family has been proposed, and Matthew Dryer's 2024 classification places it within the East Torricelli branch of the Torricelli family. Tok Pisin is steadily replacing Tayap, which villagers themselves associate with older ways of life even as they hold the language in some regard.
Facts
RegionGapun village, Marienberg Rural LLG, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea 1 Speaker CountFewer than 50 as of 2020; the article gives no more precise figure. Proto-Language StatusNo proto-language is reconstructed. Kulick and Terrill (2019) found no evidence linking Tayap to the neighboring Lower Sepik languages and concluded it is a language isolate, though Usher (2020) proposed a more distant relationship to the Torricelli family. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Tayap Language
Wikimedia FoundationLead section, location sentence
spoken by fewer than 50 people in Gapun village of Marienberg Rural LLG in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea
Infobox and speakers sentence
Fewer than 50 of the village's original 200 residents remain.
Classification section
Kulick and Terrill (2019) found no evidence that Tayap is related to the Lower Sepik languages...They conclude that Tayap is a language isolate
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