Yetfa and Biksi (Biaksi; Inisine) are dialects of a language spoken in Jetfa District,

Pegunungan Bintang Regency Pegunungan Bintang Regency or Bintang Mountains Regency ("Bintang" means "star") is a regency in the Indonesian province of Highland Papua. It was created on 11 December 2002 from the north-eastern districts of Jayawijaya Regency. It covers an a ...

Highland Papua Highland Papua () is a provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia, which roughly follows the borders of the Papuan customary region of Lano-Pago (often shortened to La Pago). It covers an area of and had a population of 1,467,050 according to ...

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, ...

, and across the border in

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 ...

. It is a trade language spoken in Western New Guinea up to the PNG border. According to Hammarström (2008), it is being passed on to children and is not in immediate danger.

External relationships

Yetfa is not close to other languages. Ross (2005), following Laycock & Z’Graggen (1975), places Biksi in its own branch of the

Sepik The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the third largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River, Fly and Mamberamo River, Mamberamo. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provi ...

family, but there is little data to base a classification on. The similarities noted by Laycock are sporadic and may simply be loans; Ross based his classification on pronouns, but they are dissimilar enough for the connection to be uncertain. Usher found it to be a Southern Pauwasi language. Foley (2018) classifies it 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 ...

. Foley (2018b: 295-296) notes that first person pronoun and third-person singular masculine pronoun in Yetfa match pronouns found in

Sepik languages The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a language family, family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik River, Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than prese ...

, with some resemblances such as ''nim'' ‘louse’ with proto-Sepik *nim ‘louse’, and ''wal'' ‘ear’ with proto-Sepik *wan. However, Foley (2018b) considers the evidence linking Yetfa to the Sepik family to be insufficient, thus classifying Yetfa as a

until further evidence can be found.

Pronouns

Pronouns from Ross (2005): : Pronouns from Kim (2005), as quoted in Foley (2018): :

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of Yetfa from Kim (2006), quoted in Foley (2018): : The following basic vocabulary words are from Conrad & Dye (1975) and Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: :

Sentences

There is very little sentence data for Yetfa. Some of the few documented Yetfa sentences are: The Yetfa tense suffix -''(y)o'' is also present in Tofanma.

References

External links

Yetfa word list at TransNewGuinea.org
{{authority control Languages of Western New Guinea Languages of Papua New Guinea South Pauwasi languages