The Sikka language or Sikkanese, also known as Sika, is spoken by around 180,000 people of the Sika

ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and th ...

island in East Nusa Tenggara province,

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 ...

. It is a member of the Central Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. Sikka is notable for being one of the few languages which contain a non-

allophonic In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...

labiodental flap. Like many other languages in eastern Indonesia, it shows evidence of having a Papuan (non-Austronesian)

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

, but in the case of Sika, this includes extreme morphological simplification and about 20% lexical replacement in basic vocabulary. It has been hypothesized that the Austronesian languages in that area could be descendants of a creole language, resulting from the intrusion of Austronesian languages into eastern Indonesia. Sika has at least three recognized dialects: * ''Sikka Natar'', which is generally perceived in the region to be the most refined and most prestigious of the Sika speech varieties. * ''Sara Krowe'', spoken in the central hills of Sika speaking people. * ''Ata Tana 'Ai'' or ''Sara Tana 'Ai'', used by both outsiders and insiders to refer to the people and language of the region and it is also used as a

ritual language A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is any language that is cultivated and used primarily in church service or for other religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives. Concept A sacre ...

Phonology

Consonants

Sika has the following consonant phonemes:

Vowels

Sika has the following vowel phonemes:

References

Flores-Lembata languages Languages of Indonesia {{au-lang-stub