Summary
Batuley (Gwatle lir) is a language spoken on the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. It is close to Mariri; Hughes (1987) estimates that around 80% of lexical items are shared. The language's name comes from the Gwatle island (Batuley in Indonesian), which the Batuley consider their homeland (Daigle (2015)).
| Batuley | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Aru Islands |
Native speakers | 3,600 (2011)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bay |
| Glottolog | batu1258 |
Geographical distribution edit
Batuley is spoken in eastern Indonesia across seven villages that Daigle (2015) lists in his thesis. Some of them are Kabalsiang on Aduar Island, Kumul in the identically-named island, and Gwaria (Waria) in the Island of Gwari.
Phonology edit
Vowels edit
Batuley has a simple five-vowel system with no vowel length distinction (Daigle 2015).
- i
- e
- u
- o
- a
[ɪ] is an allophone of /i/ and /e/ (in different environments). [e] is an allophone of /a/ when it does not receive the primary stress. Furthermore, /e/ and /i/ may both be reduced to a schwa in fast speech in certain conditions.
Consonants edit
Daigle (2015)
| Labial | Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | t | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | ʤ | ɡ | |
| Fricative | ɸ | s | |||
| Rhotic | r | ||||
| Lateral | l | ||||
| Semivowel | j | w | |||
Lexicon edit
Daigle (2015)
- gwayor: water, fresh water
- gwari: island
- keiran: sister; branch
- lef: big house
- kai: wood, tree
- ban: chest, breast
- fol gwayer: breast milk (fol: breast, gwayer: its water)
- kaom: scorpion
- gwarfagfag: small fresh-water turtle
- kudomsai: cloud
- ror: dance (n)
- fulan: month
- sapato, safato: shoe (borrowing)
- solar: diesel fuel (borrowing)
- nol: zero (borrowing)
- fikir: think (borrowing)
- fuis: cat (borrowing)
- guru: teacher (borrowing)
- kartas: paper (borrowing)
- kasar: crack, split (borrowing)
- kofi: hat (borrowing)
- tata: older sibling (borrowing)
- tempo: year (borrowing)
- buku: book (borrowing)
References edit
- ^ Batuley at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Further reading edit
- Daigle, Benjamin T. (2015). A grammar sketch of Batuley: An Austronesian language of Aru, eastern Indonesia (PDF) (M.A. thesis). LOT (Leiden University). hdl:1887/43444. Retrieved 11 May 2019.