The languages[change | change source]
The majority of the Papuan languages are spoken on the island of New Guinea (which is divided between the country of Papua New Guinea and Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Irian Jaya), with a number spoken in the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville Island, and the Solomon Islands to the east, and in Halmahera, Timor, and the Alor archipelago to the west. One Papuan language, Meriam Mir, is spoken within the national borders of Australia, in the eastern Torres Strait. The only Papuan languages with official recognition are those of East Timor.
New Guinea is perhaps the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides the Austronesian languages, there are some 800 languages divided into perhaps sixty small language families, with unclear relationships to each other or to anything else, plus a large number of language isolates.
References[change | change source]
- Pawley, Andrew; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson, eds. (2005). Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Other websites[change | change source]
- 2003 bibliography of languages (Papuan and Austronesian) of Indonesian Papua
- Summer Institute of Linguistics site on languages (Papuan and Austronesian) of Papua New Guinea
- Map of Papuan languages (formerly known as the East Papuan family) of island Melanesia
- Bill Foley on Papuan languages
- Dryer's Papuan Language Families and Genera