Yessan-Mayo (also known as Yesan, Mayo, and natively known as Yamano
) is a
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 2000 people in
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. It is spoken in Maio () and Yessan () villages of Yessan ward,
Ambunti Rural LLG
Ambunti Rural LLG is a local-level government (LLG) of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Various Sepik languages are spoken in the LLG.
Wards
*01. Ambunti
*02. Bangus ( Yelogu language speakers)
*03. Waskuk ( Kwoma language speakers)
*04. ...
,
East Sepik Province
East Sepik is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Wewak. East Sepik has an estimated population of 433,481 people (2010 census) and is 43,426 km square in size.
History
Cherubim Dambui was appointed as East Sepik's first premier b ...
.
Phonology
The phonology of Yessan-Mayo is described in Foley (2018)
as such:
Vowels
Consonants
Pronouns
Foreman (1974)
describes two kinds of pronouns in Yessan-Mayo: non-emphatic and
emphatic pronouns.
In addition to the non-emphatic pronouns, there is also the
reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence.
In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously n ...
''kwarara'' (self), as well as the
demonstrative pronoun
Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular fram ...
s ''op'' (this) and ''otop'' (that).
Non-emphatic
Emphatic
External links
*
Paradisec
The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel- ...
has a collection of
Don Laycock's
DL2 that includes Yessan-Mayo language materials.
References
Tama languages
Languages of East Sepik Province
Languages of Sandaun Province
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