The Ambai language is an
Austronesian language spoken in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
n New Guinea (
Papua Province), mostly on the
Ambai Islands as well as the southern part of
Yapen Island
Yapen (also Japan, Jobi) is an island of Papua, Indonesia. The Yapen Strait separates Yapen and the Biak Islands to the north. It is in Cenderawasih Bay off the north-western coast of the island of New Guinea. To the west is Mios Num Island a ...
.
The number of speakers is estimated to be 10,000. Dialects are Randawaya, Ambai (Wadapi-Laut), and Manawi.
Phonology
Ambai has 19 consonants and 6 vowels, shown on the tables below.
Morphology
Pronouns
All pronouns in Ambai mark for
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
,
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
and
clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...
(in first person).
The following bound pronouns are obligatorily added as affixes to the verb to stand as the subject of the sentence. Every verb in Ambai takes a subject, even if it is a 'dummy' 3rd person pronoun.
The following pronouns are independent and are more restricted in use. They do not appear as subjects – since the subject is marked already on the verb – but can appear as objects, in prepositional phrases and in subordinate clauses. Some verbs allow the object pronoun to be omitted.
Examples of pronouns used in everyday language:
References
Further reading
* P.J. Silzer ''Ambai, an Austronesian Language of Irian Jaya, Indonesia'',
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...
, 1983.
External links
The Ambai Language Documentation Page''A Short Description of Ambai Grammar'', by Ariel Gutman ''A Grammar Sketch of Ambai'', by Fannie St-Pierre-Tanguay
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ambai Language
South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages
Languages of western New Guinea
Ambai Islands
Cenderawasih Bay
Papua (province) culture