Purari language
| Purari | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | Purari River, Gulf Province |
Native speakers | 7,000 (2011)[1] |
|
unclassified (Trans–New Guinea?) | |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
iar |
| Glottolog |
pura1257[2] |
Purari is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea.
Pronouns are 1sg nai, 2sg ni, 1pl enei. The first may reflect Trans–New Guinea *na, but otherwise there is little evidence to classify the language.
Name
Purari is also known as Koriki, Evorra, I'ai, Maipua, and Namau. "Namau" is a colonial term which means "deaf (lit.), inattentive, or stupid (Williams 1924: 4)." Today people of the Purari Delta find this term offensive. F.E. Williams reports that the "[a]n interpreter suggests that by some misunderstanding the name had its origin in the despair of an early missionary, who, finding the natives turned a deaf ear to his teaching, dubbed them all 'Namau'." (Williams 1924: 4). Koriki, I'ai, and Maipua refer to self-defining groups that make up the six groups that today compose the people who speak Purari. Along with the Baroi (formerly known as the Evorra, which was the name of a village site), Kaimari and the Vaimuru, these groups speak mutually intelligible dialects of Purari.
References
- ↑ Purari at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Purari". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Holmes, J. H. (Jan–June 1913). "A Preliminary Study of the Namau Language, Purari Delta, Papua". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 43: 124–142. doi:10.2307/2843165. JSTOR 2843165. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - Williams, F.E. (1924). The natives of the Purari Delta. Port Moresby: Government Printer.
External links
 |
Purari language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator |