Molof (Ampas, Poule, Powle-Ma) is a poorly documented

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 ...

spoken by about 200 people in Molof village, Senggi District,

Keerom Regency Keerom Regency is one of the regencies (''kabupaten'') in the Papua Province of Indonesia. It was formed from the eastern districts then within Jayapura Regency with effect from 12 November 2002. It covers an area of 9,365 km2, and had a pop ...

Classification

Wurm The Wurm (; nl, Worm ) is a river in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany. It rises in the Eifel mountains and flows for 57 kilometres before discharging into the Rur. Geography The Wurm is a left (western) tributary of the ...

(1975) placed it as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea, but

Ross Ross or ROSS may refer to: People * Clan Ross, a Highland Scottish clan * Ross (name), including a list of people with the surname or given name Ross, as well as the meaning * Earl of Ross, a peerage of Scotland Places * RoSS, the Republic of Sou ...

(2005) could not find enough evidence to classify it.

Søren Wichmann Søren Wichmann (born 1964) is a Danish linguist specializing in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, Mesoamerican languages, and epigraphy. Since June 2016, he has been employed as a University Lecturer at Leiden University Centre for Li ...

(2018)Wichmann, Søren. 2013
A classification of Papuan languages
. In: Hammarström, Harald and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact and classification of Papuan languages (Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, Special Issue 2012), 313-386. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea. tentatively considers it to be a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...

, as does Foley (2018). Usher (2020) tentatively suggests it may be a

Pauwasi language The Pauwasi languages are a likely family of Papuan languages, mostly in Indonesia. The subfamilies are at best only distantly related. The best described Pauwasi language is Karkar, across the border in Papua New Guinea. They are spoken around t ...

.New Guinea World
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Phonology

Molof has a small consonant inventory, but a large one for vowels. Molof consonants, quoted by Foley (2018) from Donohue (n.d.): Molof vowels (8 total), quoted by Foley (2018) from Donohue (n.d.):

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of Molof from Rumaropen (2005), quoted in Foley (2018): : The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1971, 1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: :

References

External links

Molof word list at TransNewGuinea.org
{{Papuan languages Languages of western New Guinea Unclassified languages of New Guinea Pauwasi languages