The North Halmahera languages are a family of languages spoken in the northern and eastern parts of the island of

Halmahera Halmahera, formerly known as Jilolo, Gilolo, or Jailolo, is the largest island in the Maluku Islands. It is part of the North Maluku province of Indonesia, and Sofifi, the capital of the province, is located on the west coast of the island. Ha ...

and some neighboring islands in

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 ...

. The southwestern part of the island is occupied by the unrelated South Halmahera languages, which are a subgroup of Austronesian. They may be most closely related to the languages of the

Bird's Head The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: ''Kepala Burung'', nl, Vogelkop) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai''), is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indonesian provinces ...

region of West Papua, but this is not well-established. The languages were possibly brought to the region as a result of migration from

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

, likely predating the arrival of Austronesian languages. The best known North Halmaheran language is

Ternate Ternate is a city in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and an island in the Maluku Islands. It was the ''de facto'' provincial capital of North Maluku before Sofifi on the nearby coast of Halmahera became the capital in 2010. It is off the ...

(50,000 native speakers), which is a regional lingua franca and which, along with

Tidore Tidore ( id, Kota Tidore Kepulauan, lit. "City of Tidore Islands") is a city, island, and archipelago in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia, west of the larger island of Halmahera. Part of North Maluku Province, the city includes the island ...

, were the languages of the rival medieval

and

sultanates, famous for their role in the spice trade.

Genetic and areal relations

The North Halmahera languages are classified by some to be part of a larger West Papuan family, along with the languages of the

region of

Western New Guinea Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, or Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the Melanesian island of New Guinea which is administered by Indonesia. Since the island is alternatively named as Papua, the region ...

, while others consider North Halmahera to form a distinct language family, with no demonstrable relationship outside the region. The languages of North Halmahera appear to have the closest affinity with the languages of the Bird's Head, which suggests a migration from the western Bird's Head to northern Halmahera. However,

Ger Reesink Gerard P. Reesink (more commonly known as Ger Reesink) is a Dutch linguist who specializes in Papuan languages. Education He studied psychology at Utrecht University. He obtained his PhD in linguistics at the University of Amsterdam, where he com ...

notes that the evidence for genetic relatedness between the different "West Papuan" groupings is too skimpy to form a firm conclusion, suggesting that they be considered an areal network of unrelated linguistic families. Moreover, many speakers of North Halmahera languages, such as the ,

, and peoples, are physically distinct from New Guineans, while Papuan traits are more prevalent among the Austronesian-speaking peoples of South Halmahera.

Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blus ...

(2013) considers this paradox to be a result of historical

language replacement Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceiv ...

. Ternate, Tidore, West Makian, and

Sahu Sahu (Sahoo, or Shaw, or Shau, or Gupta, or Saha, or Saw, Shah). is a surname found in India and Pakistan. The meaning of the term "Sahu" may change from region to region.''. Usage In India, the surname is found among Gakhars, Marwadi, Janjuas, ...

have received extensive Austronesian influence in terms of grammar. Bert Voorhoeve noted a set of lexical similarities between the North Halmahera languages and the Central Papuan languages of the south coast of

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 ...

, possibly arising from potential language contact.

Internal classification

The family is dialectally heterogeneous, with blurry lines between different languages. While different authors tend to disagree on the number of distinct languages identified, there is general accord regarding the internal subgrouping of the family. The classification used here is that of Voorhoeve 1988. West Makian is divergent due to heavy Austronesian influence. It was once classified as an Austronesian language. It should be distinguished from East Makian (Taba), an unrelated Austronesian language. There is a degree of mutual intelligibility between the Galela–Tobelo languages, and Voorhoeve 1988 considered them dialects of a language he called ''Northeast Halmaheran'', though most speakers consider them to be distinct languages. Ternate and Tidore are generally treated as separate languages, though there is little Abstand involved, and the separation appears to be based on sociopolitical grounds. Voorhoeve groups these idioms together as varieties of a unitary "Ternate-Tidore" language, while Miriam van Staden classifies them as distinct languages. Other North Halmahera languages, such as Galela and Tobelo, have received significant influence from Ternate, a historical legacy of the dominance of the

Ternate Sultanate The Sultanate of Ternate (Jawi alphabet: كسلطانن ترنتاي), previously also known as the Kingdom of Gapi is one of the oldest Muslim kingdoms in Indonesia besides Tidore, Jailolo, and Bacan. The Ternate kingdom was established by M ...

in the

Moluccas The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...

. Many Ternate loanwords can be found in Sahu.

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database: :

Proto-language

Proto-North Halmahera consonants are (after Voorhoeve 1994: 68, cited in Holton and Klamer 2018: 584): : Proto-North Halmahera is notable for having the

voiced retroflex stop The voiced retroflex plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d`. Like all the retroflex ...

*ɖ, as

retroflex consonant A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the h ...

s are often not found in

Papuan languages 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 geogr ...

. The following proto-North Halmahera reconstructions are listed in Holton and Klamer (2018: 620–621). Most of the forms in Holton and Klamer are derived from Wada (1980). ;proto-North Halmahera reconstructions (Holton & Klamer 2018) :

References

External links

North Halmahera word lists
(Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database) {{Papuan languages West Papuan languages Languages of the Maluku Islands Language families Halmahera