Tobelo ( id, bahasa Tobelo) is a North Halmahera language spoken on the eastern Indonesian 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 on parts of several neighboring islands. The Tobelo-speaking heartland is in the six administrative districts ( id, kecamatan) of Tobelo, located on the western shore of Kao Bay and forming the central part of Halmahera Utara Regency. Other Tobelo-speaking areas are the five districts of Wasile (the northwestern half of Halmahera Timur Regency) on the southern and eastern shores of Kao Bay, and the northern half of Morotai Island. The district capital, also known as

Tobelo Tobelo is a town and a district on the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera. It is the capital of the regency (''kabupaten'') of North Halmahera, part of the province of North Maluku. The town was formalised as the capital of North Halmahera in ...

, serves as a regional commercial and administrative center and is the largest settlement on Halmahera.

Dialects

Six principal dialects are generally recognized (Voorhoeve 1988): *Heleworuru *Boeng *Dodinga *Lake Paca *Kukumutuk *Popon The last three dialects are also known as "Tugutil". The Tugutil or "Forest Tobelo" varieties may include additional dialectal variants, but this has not been satisfactorily documented (Voorhoeve 1988). Intelligibility is not great (Ethnologue). In addition, based on cognition percentages in a basic vocabulary list, Voorhoeve 1988 identifies five other North Halmaheran language varieties as dialects of the putative Northeast Halmaheran language. Together with Tobelo, these varieties are Galela,

Loloda Loloda is a North Halmahera language of Indonesia. The Loloda area is part of the West Halmahera Regency of North Malukku. The coastline here is very rugged, with sometimes near vertical cliffs rising out of the sea. The mostly Christian popula ...

, Modole,

Pagu The Projektions-AG Union (generally shortened to PAGU) was a German film production company which operated between 1911 and 1924 during the silent era. From 1917 onwards, the company functioned as an independent unit of Universum Film AG, and was ...

and Tabaru. Most speakers consider these to be distinct languages from Tobelo, although they do acknowledge a certain degree of mutual intelligibility.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant sounds in parentheses only occur in loan words or in other Tobelo dialects.

Vowels

Mid front vowels can range from /e/ to /ɛ/.

Directionals

Most all of the 50 languages of Maluku have some sort of directional system. At the least the up/down distinction seems to be an

areal feature In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...

. But this brings up the chicken and the egg phenomenon. Is this directional system of AN or NAN origin? Or is it a mixture? Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the Tobelo are the most widespread ethnic group in Maluku, with sizable emigrant population throughout the province. We can a least be sure that the Malay directionals are the "egg", because Malay as spoken in Western Indonesia does not use these directionals whereas Moluccan Malay uses direct calques of the Tobelo terms: :''bawah'', ''atas'', ''darat'', ''laut''. Tobelo directionals are described in Taylor (1984). Tobelo directional adverbs occur: #on motion verbs to specify direction of motion #on nouns to specify motion away from or toward an object Thus, interpretation of directional adverbs is entirely context-dependent. For example, If I meet you landwards of the house, this means that I'm headed inland from my house. If I meet you seawards of the house, then it means I'm headed inland to the house.

References

External links

Tobelo Bible App