The Nias language is an Austronesian language spoken on Nias

Nias

Nīas is an island off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Nias is also the name of the archipelago, containing the Hinako archipelago....

 Island and the Batu Islands

Batu Islands

The Batu Islands are an archipelago of Indonesia located in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Sumatra, between Nias and Siberut. The three primary islands, of approximately equal size, are Pini, Tanahmasa, and Tanahbala. There are forty-eight smaller islands, of which less than half are...

 off the west coast of Sumatra

Sumatra

Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...

 in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

. It belongs to the Northwest Sumatran

Northwest Sumatran languages

The Northwest Sumatran languages are a putative group of languages spoken by the Batak and related peoples in the interior of northern Sumatra, and by the Nias, Mentawai, etc. on the barrier islands off the western coast of Sumatra.-Classification:The languages normally included in North Sumatran...

 subgroup which also includes Mentawai

Mentawai language

The Mentawai language is an Austronesian language, spoken by the Mentawai-people of the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra. The dialects of the language include: – Silabu, Sipura – Simalegi, Sakalagan, Saumanganja – North Siberut, South Siberut – Taikaku – Pagai....

 and the Batak languages

Batak languages

The Batak languages are spoken by Batak and Alas people of North Sumatra, Indonesia.Historically they were written using Batak script but the Latin alphabet is now used for most writing....

. It had about 770,000 speakers in 2000. There are three main dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s: northern, central and southern.

Grammar

The basic word order

Word order

In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...

 in Nias is verb–object–subject, a characteristic shared with Malagasy

Malagasy language

Malagasy is the national language of Madagascar, a member of the Austronesian family of languages. Most people in Madagascar speak it as a first language as do some people of Malagasy descent elsewhere.-History:...

 and the Batak languages

Batak languages

The Batak languages are spoken by Batak and Alas people of North Sumatra, Indonesia.Historically they were written using Batak script but the Latin alphabet is now used for most writing....

. There are no adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s in Nias, instead verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

s are used in their place.

Nias shows consonant mutation

Consonant mutation

Consonant mutation is when a consonant in a word changes according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment.Mutation phenomena occur in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern Celtic languages...

 at the beginning of noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s and some other classes of words to show grammatical case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

. Several consonants are subject to mutation as shown in the table below. Where a word begins in a vowel, either n or g is added before the vowel.

Initial mutations

Base form	Mutated form
f	v
t	d
s	z
c
k	g
b	mb
d	ndr
vowel	n + vowel g + vowel

Phonology

The southern dialect of Nias has the following phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s:

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Сentral Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i		u
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	e	⟨ö⟩ ɤ	o
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...		a

Consonants

	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Dental/ Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palato- alveolar	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m	n
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	b	t d ⟨ndr⟩ [dʳ]	⟨c⟩ [tʃ] ⟨z⟩ [dʒ]		k ɡ	⟨'⟩ [ʔ]
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	ɸ β	s			⟨kh⟩ [x]	h
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...	⟨ß⟩ [ʋ]	l		⟨y⟩ [j]	w
Trills Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....	⟨mb⟩ [ʙ]	r

External links

• Time for Nias Language to Enrich National Language An update for Nias Dictionary
• Nias wordlist, Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database
• Brown, Lea (2001): Grammar of Nias Selatan. PhD Thesis, University of Sidney. (PDF download available.)
• Online dictionary of Nias
• Kamus Nias-Indonesia (Nias-Indonesian Dictionary)
• Articles on Nias Language (in Indonesian)