Lisela ( id, bahasa Lisela), also called Li Enyorot, is an Austronesian language; in 1989 it was spoken by about 11,900

Lisela people Lisela ( id, Suku Lisela) or Rana people is an ethnic group mostly living on Indonesian island Buru, as well as on some other Maluku Islands. They belong to the eastern Indonesian anthropological group and are sometimes referred to as northern ...

mostly living in the northern part of

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 ...

n island

Buru Buru (formerly spelled Boeroe, Boro, or Bouru) is the third largest island within the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. It lies between the Banda Sea to the south and Seram Sea to the north, west of Ambon and Seram islands. The island belongs to ...

( id, Pulau Buru). It is also preserved among the small Lisela community on the Ambon Island. The language belongs to the Sula–Buru group of Central Maluku branch of

Malayo-Polynesian languages The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeas ...

. It has two dialects, major Lisela and minor Tagalisa, the latter is used by the inhabitants of the north-east coast of Buru. The language is dying as most Lisela people switch either to the national language of Indonesia,

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

, or to the Ambonese variety of the

Malay language Malay (; ms, Bahasa Melayu, links=no, Jawi alphabet, Jawi: , Rejang script, Rencong: ) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and that is also spo ...

( ''Melayu Ambon''). The latter is widely used in the

Maluku Islands 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 ...

as a lingua franca and is a local form of Malay with additions of the local lexicon. The language most closely related to Lisela is

, especially its dialect ''Masarete'' – their lexical similarity is 68%. Thus many sources regard Lisela as a dialect, though the most diverging, of Buru. Lisela had also borrowed much from the Sula language, as a result of the interaction between the Lisela and Sula people living together as the northern Buru coast. The language has no writing system. The most detailed study of Lisela language was conducted in the 1980s by Charles E. Grimes and Barbara Dix Grimes – Australian missionaries and ethnographers, active members of SIL International (they should not be confused with Joseph E. Grimes and Barbara F. Grimes, Charles' parents, also known Australian ethnographers).

References

{{Languages of Indonesia Central Maluku languages Languages of the Maluku Islands