Berik language
| Berik | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Tor Atas district, Sarmi Regency |
Native speakers | 1,200 (1994)[1] |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
bkl |
| Glottolog |
beri1254[2] |
Berik is a Papuan language spoken in eastern Papua. Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor river towards the northern coast of Indonesian-controlled Irian Jaya.[3] US linguist John McWhorter cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware".[4] Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana (meaning "[he] gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight"), affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.[4][5][6]
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Alveolo-palatal | palatal | Velar | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive and affricate | p [p] | b [b] | t [t] | d [d] | j [d͡ʑ] | k [k] | g [ɡ] | |||||
| Fricative | f [f] | s [s] | ||||||||||
| Nasal | m [m] | n [n] | ng [ŋ] | |||||||||
| Approximant | l [l] | y [j] | w [w] | |||||||||
| Tap | r [ɾ] | |||||||||||
Vowels
Berik has the common six vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ plus /ə/).[7]
Sample
- Angtaneʻ bosna Usafe je gatas tarnap ge nuin. Tesa ga belim taban, ga jes talebowel.
- "There was once a person named Usafe who lived near the sago acreages. Whenever he finished cutting down a sago tree, he pounded it"[8]
Notes
- ↑ Berik at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Berik". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ Matthews, "Berik Literacy Program", p. 109
- 1 2 McWhorter, "No Tears for Dead Tongues"
- ↑ "Difficult languages--Tongue twisters--In search of the world’s hardest language", Economist, New York,Dec 17th 2009.
- ↑ John McWhorter,"No Tears For Dead Tongues", Forbes,2/21/2008 @ 6:00PM.
- ↑ Westrum, "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik," p. 137
- ↑ Taken from Jones, "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", p. 130
References
- Jones, Linda K. (1992), "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", in Hwang, Shin Ja J.; Merrifield, William R., Language in context: Essays for Robert E. Longacre (PDF), Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 107, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington, pp. 127–36
- Matthews, Delle P. (1990), "The Berik Literacy Program: From Illiteracy to National Language Proficiency", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya 18: 109–24
- McWhorter, John (21 March 2008), "No Tears for Dead Tongues", Forbes, retrieved 2011-05-09
- Westrum, Peter N. (1988), "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya 16: 137
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