Molof (Ampas, Poule, Powle-Ma) 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 200 people in Molof village, Senggi District,

Keerom Regency Keerom Regency is one of the regencies (''kabupaten'') in the Papua Province of Indonesia. It was formed from the eastern districts then within Jayapura Regency with effect from 12 November 2002. It covers an area of 9,365 km2, and had a po ...

Classification

Wurm (1975) placed it as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea, but Ross (2005) could not find enough evidence to classify it.

Søren Wichmann Søren Wichmann (born 1964) is a Danish linguist specializing in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, Mesoamerican languages, and epigraphy. Since June 2016, he has been employed as a University Lecturer at Leiden University Centre for L ...

(2018)Wichmann, Søren. 2013
A classification of Papuan languages
. In: Hammarström, Harald and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact and classification of Papuan languages (Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, Special Issue 2012), 313-386. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea. tentatively considers it to be 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 ...

, as does Foley (2018). Usher (2020) tentatively suggests it may be a

Pauwasi language The Pauwasi languages are a likely family of Papuan languages, mostly in Indonesia. The subfamilies are at best only distantly related. The best described Pauwasi language is Karkar, across the border in Papua New Guinea. They are spoken around ...

.New Guinea World
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Phonology

Molof has a small consonant inventory, but a large one for vowels. Molof consonants, quoted by Foley (2018) from Donohue (n.d.): Molof vowels (8 total), quoted by Foley (2018) from Donohue (n.d.):

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of Molof from Rumaropen (2005), quoted in Foley (2018): : The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1971, 1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: :

References

External links

Molof word list at TransNewGuinea.org
{{Papuan languages Languages of Western New Guinea Unclassified languages of New Guinea Pauwasi languages