Blagar is a
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
of
Pantar island in the
Alor archipelago of
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 ...
. The Tereweng
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
spoken on Tereweng Island off the southeast coast of Pantar
is sometimes considered a separate language.
The increasing prominence of
Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
has been putting pressure on the Blagar language although the language is still used by all age groups. By the 1970s Indonesian replaced Blagar as the language of churches and mosques, and in the early 2000s the spread of Indonesian was furthered by the introduction of electricity on
Pura Island
Pura is an island in the Alor archipelago, located on the eastern tip of the Lesser Sunda Islands. The island is the largest island in the Pantar Strait, which separates the two larger islands of Pantar and Alor. It has an area of 27.83 km2, ...
.
Phonology
Vowels
Blagar has five vowels, with a sharp contrast between short and long vowels.
Consonants
Grammar
The
morphological typology
Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures. The field organizes languages on the basis of how those languages for ...
of Blagar is categorized as
isolating.
Writing system
Blagar uses the 26 letters of the
ISO basic Latin alphabet
The ISO basic Latin alphabet is an international standard (beginning with ISO/IEC 646) for a Latin-script alphabet that consists of two sets (uppercase and lowercase) of 26 letters, codified in various national and international standards and ...
, and has two
digraphs: and .
, , , and are only used in foreign place names and loanwords.
[
Another writing system is also used, which is phonemic and is similar to the writing system of Indonesian.
]
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
External links
Alphabet and pronunciation
Audio speech of the Pura dialect of Blagar
Description of the Blagar language
Blagar Swadesh list at TransNewGuinea.org
Blagar Swadesh List by The Rosetta Project at the Internet Archive
Genesis, Mark, and Acts in the Pura dialect of the Blagar language of Indonesia
Blagar Dadibira Collection
at The Language Archive
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Alor–Pantar languages
Languages of Indonesia