Tarangan is one of the

Aru languages The Aru languages are a group of a dozen Austronesian languages spoken on the Aru Islands in Indonesia. None are spoken by more than ten thousand people. Although geographically close to Central Maluku languages, they are not part of that group ...

, spoken by inhabitants of the

Aru Islands The Aru Islands Regency ( id, Kabupaten Kepulauan Aru) is a group of about 95 low-lying islands in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia. It also forms a regency of Maluku Province, with a land area of . At the 2011 Census the Regency had a po ...

in eastern

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 ...

. There are two "Tarangan" varieties: East and West Tarangan. These varieties are divergent, perhaps no closer than they are to Manombai, also spoken in the Arus. West Tarangan is a trade language of the southern islands.

Phonology

The following is the description for West Tarangan:

Consonants

* /k/ can occur as a glottal intervocalically between two non-high vowels. * /ɸ/ is heard as a stop syllable-final position. * /w j/ are heard as voiced stops in word-initial position and within a stressed noninitial syllable onset.

Vowels

* /a i/ in unstressed positions are heard as * Sounds /e o/ are phonetically ̝ o̝

References

Aru languages Languages of Indonesia {{au-lang-stub