Batuley language
Batuley (Gwatle lir) is a language spoken on the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. It is close to Mariri; Hughes (1987) estimates that around 80% of lexical items are shared. The language's name comes from the Gwatle island (Batuley in Indonesian), which the Batuley consider their homeland (Daigle (2015)).
| Batuley | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Aru Islands |
Native speakers | 3,600 (2011)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bay |
| Glottolog | batu1258 |
Geographical distribution
Batuley is spoken in eastern Indonesia across seven villages that Daigle (2015) lists in his thesis. Some of them are Kabalsiang on Aduar Island, Kumul in the identically-named island, and Gwaria (Waria) in the Island of Gwari.
Phonology
Vowels
Batuley has a simple five-vowel system with no vowel length distinction (Daigle 2015).
- i
- e
- u
- o
- a
[ɪ] is an allophone of /i/ and /e/ (in different environments). [e] is an allophone of /a/ when it does not receive the primary stress. Furthermore, /e/ and /i/ may both be reduced to a schwa in fast speech in certain conditions.
Lexicon
Daigle (2015)
- gwayor: water, fresh water
- gwari: island
- keiran: sister; branch
- lef: big house
- kai: wood, tree
- ban: chest, breast
- fol gwayer: breast milk (fol: breast, gwayer: its water)
- kaom: scorpion
- gwarfagfag: small fresh-water turtle
- kudomsai: cloud
- ror: dance (n)
- fulan: month
- sapato, safato: shoe (borrowing)
- solar: diesel fuel (borrowing)
- nol: zero (borrowing)
- fikir: think (borrowing)
- fuis: cat (borrowing)
- guru: teacher (borrowing)
- kartas: paper (borrowing)
- kasar: crack, split (borrowing)
- kofi: hat (borrowing)
- tata: older sibling (borrowing)
- tempo: year (borrowing)
- buku: book (borrowing)
References
- Batuley at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Further reading
- Daigle, Benjamin T. (2015). A grammar sketch of Batuley: An Austronesian language of Aru, eastern Indonesia (PDF) (M.A. thesis). LOT (Leiden University). hdl:1887/43444. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
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