The Sawai language (also Weda) is a South Halmahera language of

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...

stock spoken in the

Weda Weda is a district in North Maluku, Indonesia, located on the east coast of Halmahera, the largest of the Maluku Islands. The district includes 24 small offshore islands. Its administrative centre is the village of Were, which is also the capital ...

and Gane Timor districts of southern Halmahera, northern Maluku Province, Indonesia. There are approximately 12,000 speakers.

Sounds

Below is a description of the Kobe dialect of Sawai spoken in the villages of Lelilef Woyebulan and

Kobe Peplis Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, wh ...

, as well as from Whistler (1995).

Consonants

Sawai has 15 consonants:

Vowels

Sawai has 8 vowels:

Syllable

Sawai has the following syllable structure: : (C)(C)V(C) Examples:

References

Bibliography

* Burquest, Donald A.; & Laidig, Wyn D. (Eds.). (1992). ''Phonological studies in four languages of Maluku''. The Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington publications in linguistics (No. 108). Dallas: The Summer Institute of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Arlington, and Pattimura University. . * Whistler, Ronald. (1992). Phonology of Sawai. In D. A. Burquest & W. D. Laidig (Eds.), ''Phonological studies in four languages of Maluku'' (pp. 7–32). Dallas: The Summer Institute of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Arlington, and Pattimura University. * Whistler, Ronald; & Whistler, Jacqui. (1995). Sawai: Introduction and wordlist. In D. T. Tryon (Ed.), ''Comparative Austronesian dictionary: An introduction to Austronesian studies'' (part 1: fascicle 1, pp. 659–65). Trends in linguistics, Documentation (No. 10). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. {{Austronesian languages South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages Languages of Indonesia Halmahera