North Bougainville languages
Encyclopedia
The North or West Bougainville languages are a small language family
spoken on the island of Bougainville
in Papua New Guinea
. They were classified as East Papuan languages
by Stephen Wurm
, but this does not now seem tenable, and was abandoned in Ethnologue
(2009).
The family includes the closely related Rotokas and Eivo language, plus two languages that are only distantly related:
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
spoken on the island of Bougainville
Bougainville Island
Bougainville Island is the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville of Papua New Guinea. This region is also known as Bougainville Province or the North Solomons. The population of the province is 175,160 , which includes the adjacent island of Buka and assorted outlying islands...
in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
. They were classified as East Papuan languages
East Papuan languages
*Baining family*North Bougainville family — Bougainville*South Bougainville family — Bougainville*Central Solomon family...
by Stephen Wurm
Stephen Wurm
Stephen Adolphe Wurm was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.- Biography :Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky, and was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm...
, but this does not now seem tenable, and was abandoned in Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
(2009).
The family includes the closely related Rotokas and Eivo language, plus two languages that are only distantly related:
- Keriaka (Ramopa) isolate
- Konua (Rapoisi) isolate
- Rotokas branch: RotokasRotokas languageRotokas is an East Papuan language spoken by some 4000 people in Bougainville, an island to the east of New Guinea, part of Papua New Guinea. There are at least three dialects of the language: Central Rotokas , Aita Rotokas, and Pipipaia...
, Eivo (Askopan)
See also
- Papuan languagesPapuan languagesThe Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...
- East Papuan languagesEast Papuan languages*Baining family*North Bougainville family — Bougainville*South Bougainville family — Bougainville*Central Solomon family...
- South Bougainville languagesSouth Bougainville languagesThe South or East Bougainville languages are a small language family spoken on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. They were classified as East Papuan languages by Wurm, but this does not now seem tenable, and was abandoned in Ethnologue .The languages include a closely related group...