Porome, also known as Kibiri, is a Papuan language isolate spoken by about 1,200 people as of 2011 in villages including Tipeowo, Doibo, Paile, Babaguina, Ero and Wowa near the Kikori River in Papua New Guinea's Gulf Province, Kikori District. It has two dialects, Porome and Kibiri, nine native consonants, five vowels, and five contrastive tones. Stephen Wurm originally classified it as an isolate; a later proposal by Malcolm Ross linking it to the Kiwaian languages rests on little more than shared first and second person singular pronouns and has not been generally accepted.
Facts
RegionWest Kikori Rural LLG and East Kikori Rural LLG, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea, near the Aird Hills and Kikori River tributaries 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusClassified as a language isolate by Stephen Wurm; Malcolm Ross linked it to the Kiwaian languages, though there is no strong evidence for a connection beyond the first and second person singular pronouns 1 In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Africa, found in there.
- Also in Geography Atlas: Australia, found in there.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Porome Language
Wikimedia FoundationDistribution section, sentence 1 (village and province clause)
villages in West Kikori Rural LLG and East Kikori Rural LLG of Gulf Province, near the Aird Hills and Kikori River tributaries.
Distribution section, sentence 1 (speaker count clause)
There are over a thousand speakers in Babaguina
Classification section, sentences 1 to 2
Porome was classified as a language isolate by Stephen Wurm. Although Malcolm Ross linked it to the Kiwaian languages, there is no evidence for a connection apart from the pronouns 1sg amo and 2sg do (cf. proto-Kiwaian *mo and *oro).
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