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 {{papuan-lang-stub