Wiru language

Wiru
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Ialibu-Pangia District, Southern Highlands Province
Ethnicity	Wiru
Native speakers	unknown (15,300 cited 1981)[1]
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Engan? Wiru
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wiu
Glottolog	wiru1244[2]
Map: The Wiru language of New Guinea   The Wiru language   Other Trans–New Guinea languages   Other Papuan languages   Austronesian languages   Uninhabited

Wiru or Witu is the language spoken by the Wiru people of Ialibu-Pangia District of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. It may be a language isolate within the family of Trans–New Guinea languages.

Trans–New Guinea pronouns are no 1sg (< *na) and ki-wi 2pl, ki-ta 2du (< *ki). There are a considerable number of resemblances with the Engan languages, suggesting Wiru might be a member of that family, but language contact has not been ruled out as the reason.

References

1. Wiru at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Wiru". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Further reading

• "Outside and Inside Meanings: Non-Verbal and Verbal Modalities of Agonistic Communication the Wiru of Papua New Guinea" in Man and Culture in Oceania, Vol. 15