Nasal () is an Austronesian language of southwestern

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

. Anderbeck & Aprilani (2013) consider Nasal to be an isolate within the

Malayo-Polynesian The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeast ...

branch. Smith (2017), though, includes the language in the "Sumatran" subgroup, alongside other Batak–Barrier Islands languages.

Background

Nasal is spoken in the Nasal River area of

Kaur Regency Kaur is the most southern regency of Bengkulu Province, Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra. It has an area of 2,365.00 km² and had a population of 107,899 at the 2020 Census and 126,551 at the 2020 Census. The regency seat A regency seat ...

Bengkulu Bengkulu is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southwest coast of Sumatra. It was formed on 18 November 1968 by separating out the former Bencoolen Residency area from the province of South Sumatra under Law No. 9 of 1967 and was fi ...

Province,

, in the villages of Tanjung Betuah, Gedung Menung (both in Muara Nasal district), and Tanjung Baru (in Maje district). There are many loanwords from

Lampung Lampung (Lampung: ), officially the Province of Lampung ( id, Provinsi Lampung) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, and a ...

. Languages spoken near the Nasal area include the Krui dialect of Lampung and the

Malayic The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The most prominent member is Malay, which is the national language of Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia; it further serves as basis for Indon ...

languages

Kaur Kaur ( pa, ਕੌਰ (Gurmukhi), pa, کور (Shahmukhi) en, crown prince) (sometimes spelled as ''Kour''), is a surname or a part of a personal name primarily used by the Sikh and Hindu women of Punjab region. "Kaur" is also sometimes trans ...

, Serawai and Semenda (Anderbeck & Aprilani 2013:3). The language has been given a tentative

EGIDS The Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), developed by Lewis and Simons (2010), measures a language's status in terms of endangerment Endangerment is a type of crime involving conduct that is wrongful and reckless or wanto ...

rating of 6a (Vigorous), though this is based on early sociolinguistic surveying, and language vitality has yet to be fully assessed.

References

*Anderbeck, Karl; Aprilani, Herdian. 2013.
The Improbable Language: Survey Report on the Nasal Language of Bengkulu, Sumatra
'. SIL Electronic Survey Report. SIL International.

External links

Sumatran languages Malayo-Polynesian languages Languages of Indonesia {{austronesian-lang-stub