Duriankari, or Duriankere, is a possibly extinct
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 ...
(or dialect) of Indonesian Papua. It is associated with the village of
Duriankari at the southern tip of the island of
Salawati
Salawati is one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in Southwest Papua (formerly West Papua), Indonesia. Its area is 1,623 km2. Salawati is separated from New Guinea to the southeast by the Sele Strait (a.k.a. Galowa Strai ...
, which is part of the
Raja Ampat Archipelago
Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and shoals surrounding ...
and is adjacent to the
Bird's Head Peninsula
The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: ''Kepala Burung'', nl, Vogelkop) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai''), is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indonesian provinces o ...
of the West Papuan mainland.
It was observed in the 1950s that its speakers were
shifting to the
Moi language
Moi is a West Papuan languages, West Papuan language of the Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea.
Phonology
Consonants
”is in free variation with /k/ in word-final position.
Vowels
/i, u/ can also be heard as ª, ÊŠ
References . Duriankari was reported in the 1980s to have had about 100 speakers, but by the 1990s it was said to be extinct. It was listed as a separate language by , but conclude that not enough is known about it to determine whether it is a separate language or a dialect of
Inanwatan. The Inanwatan language is spoken in the village of
Seget on the mainland across the
Sele Strait
Sele may refer to:
Places Africa
* Sele, Burkina Faso, a village in the Ouéleni Department of Burkina Fase.
* Sele, Ethiopia, a town in Agbe municipality
Asia
* Sele, Turkey, a Turkish village in Kailar in Ottoman times
* Şələ, Azerbaijan
...
, as well as in several villages in the coastal area of
Inanwatan, over 150 kilometres to the east. The Inanwatan people there regard the Duriankari as descendants of Inanwatans who were carried away so far west by a mythical flood.
A list of words in the language collected by
J.C. Anceaux is available in and .
References
Bibliography
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{{South Bird's Head languages
Inanwatan–Duriankere languages