Elseng (Morwap, Janggu, Sawa, Tabu
) is a poorly documented
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a ...
spoken by about 300 people (in 1991) in the
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
n province of
Papua. It is also known as Morwap, which means "what is it?" ‘Morwap’ is vigorously rejected as a language name by speakers and government officials.
[
Elseng is spoken in ]Omon
OMON is a system of military special police units within the Armed Forces of Russia. It previously operated within the structures of the Soviet and Russian Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD). Originating as the special forces unit of the So ...
village, Gresi Selatan district, Jayapura Regency
Jayapura Regency is one of the regencies (''kabupaten'') in Papua Province of Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Paci ...
; it is also called ''Tabu'' or ''Tapu''.
Classification
Laycock classified Elseng as a language isolate
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
but noted pronominal similarities with the Border languages. Ross included it in Border because of these similarities but noted that it does not appear to share any lexical similarities with the family. However, this may be an effect of the paucity of data on Elseng. Foley similarly classifies Elseng as an isolate.[Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ]
ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)
'. also found lexical similarities with the Border languages.
Phonology
Pronouns
Pronouns are:
Basic vocabulary
Elseng basic vocabulary from Menanti (2005), quoted in Foley (2018):[Menanti, Jackie. 2005. ''Sociolinguistic Report on the Elseng Language in Sia-Sia Village, Keerom County, Papua, Indonesia''. Unpublished report. Jayapura: SIL Indonesia.]
Sentences and phrases
Example sentences and phrases in Elseng:
References
External links
Elseng language word list at TransNewGuinea.orgBurung, Wiem. 2000. "A brief note on Elseng." SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2000-001
{{Border languages (New Guinea)
Border languages (New Guinea)
Languages of Western New Guinea
Unclassified languages of New Guinea