Porome, also known as Kibiri, is a
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 ...
of southern
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
.
Classification
Porome was classified 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 ...
by
Stephen Wurm. Although
Malcolm Ross linked it to the
Kiwaian languages, there is no evidence for a connection apart from the pronouns 1sg ''amo'' and 2sg ''do'' (cf. proto-Kiwaian *mo and *oro).
Distribution
There are over a thousand speakers in ''Babaguina'' (), ''Doibo'' (), ''Ero'' (), ''Paile'', ''Tipeowo'', and ''Wowa'' () villages in
West Kikori Rural LLG and
East Kikori Rural LLG of
Gulf Province
Gulf Province is a province of Papua New Guinea located on the southern coast. The provincial capital is Kerema. The 34,472 km2 province is dominated by mountains, lowland river deltas, and grassland flood plains. In Gulf Province, the Kiko ...
, near the
Aird Hills and
Kikori River tributaries.
Phonology
Porome has 9 native consonants. /s/ occurs in loanwords. There are no
glottal consonant
Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants ...
s.
[Petterson, Robert. 2019. ]
Interesting Features of Porome: An Isolate Language of PNG
'. Paper presented at the LSPNG 2019 Conference. 30pp.
:
There are five vowels, which are /a, e, i, o, u/.
Like the surrounding languages, Porome is a tonal language. It has 5 tones.
*High-level: ''kóí'' ‘cloth’
*Low-level: ''kòì'' ‘selfish’
*Rising: ''mèrí'' ‘road’
*Falling: ''mérì'' ‘
pandanus
''Pandanus'' is a genus of monocots with about 578 accepted species. They are palm-like, dioecious trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics and subtropics. Common names include pandan, screw palm and screw pine. The genus is classified ...
’
*Peaking: ''pàkúmì'' ‘feather’
Pronouns
The independent pronouns and subject suffixes to the verb are as follows:
:
Vocabulary
Selected Porome vocabulary from Petterson (2010):
[Petterson, Robert. 2010. ''Porome Daporo Avea Buka = Porome Language Picture Dictionary''. Ukarumpa: SIL-PNG.]
Body parts
:
Numerals
:
Village and society
:
Nature and environment
:
Plants
:
Animals
:
Comparison
Lexical comparison of Porome with neighboring languages:
:
Comparison of Porome's phonological inventory with those of neighboring languages:
:
References
*
{{Language families
Languages of Gulf Province
Papuan languages
Language isolates of New Guinea