The Sikka language or Sikkanese, also known as Sika, is spoken by around 180,000 people of the Sika ethnic group on Flores island in

East Nusa Tenggara East Nusa Tenggara ( id, Nusa Tenggara Timur – NTT; pt, Sonda Oriental) is the southernmost province of Indonesia. It comprises the eastern portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, facing the Indian Ocean in the south and the Flores Sea in the nor ...

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 The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (CMP) are a proposed branch in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding ...

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 '' ...

labiodental flap In phonetics, the voiced labiodental flap is a speech sound found primarily in languages of Central Africa, such as Kera and Mangbetu. It has also been reported in the Austronesian language Sika. It is one of the few non- rhotic flaps. The ...

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

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