Berik language
| Berik | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Tor Atas district, Sarmi Regency |
Native speakers | (1,200 cited 1994)[1] |
Foja Range (Tor–Kwerba)
| |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bkl |
| Glottolog | beri1254 |
Berik is a Papuan language spoken in eastern Papua. Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor River towards the northern coast of Indonesian-controlled Irian Jaya.[2]
US linguist John McWhorter cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware".[3] Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana (meaning "[he] gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight"), affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.[3][4][5]
Locations
[edit]In Tor Atas District, Berik is spoken in Beu, Bora Bora, Dangken, Doronta, Kondirjan, Safrontani, Sewan, Somanente, Taminambor, Tenwer, Togonfo, and Waf villages.[1]
Phonology
[edit]Consonants
[edit]| Labial | Alveolar | (Alveolo-) palatal |
Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m [m] | n [n] | ng [ŋ] | ||
| Plosive & affricate |
voiceless | p [p] | t [t] | k [k] | |
| voiced | b [b] | d [d] | j [d͡ʑ] | g [ɡ] | |
| Fricative | f [f] | s [s] | |||
| Approximant | l [l] | y [j] | w [w] | ||
| Tap | r [ɾ] | ||||
Vowels
[edit]Berik has the common six vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ plus /ə/).[6]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i [i] | u [u] | |
| Mid | e [e] | ə [ə] | o [o] |
| Open | a [a] |
Verbal morphology
[edit]Westrum (1988:150) briefly indicates that Berik encodes whether the action takes place during the day (diurnal) or during the night (nocturnal) in the verb morphology, a rare case of periodic tense whose markers are not easily segmentable.[7]
| Period | Present | Past | Future |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diurnal | gulbana | gulbanant | gulbafa |
| Nocturnal | gulbasa | gulbafant | gubafa |
Sample
[edit]- Angtaneʻ bosna Usafe je gatas tarnap ge nuin. Tesa ga belim taban, ga jes talebowel.
- "There was once a person named Usafe who lived near the sago acreages. Whenever he finished cutting down a sago tree, he pounded it"[8]
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b Berik at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ Matthews, "Berik Literacy Program", p. 109
- ^ a b McWhorter, "No Tears for Dead Tongues"
- ^ "Difficult languages--Tongue twisters--In search of the world’s hardest language"[1], Economist, New York,Dec 17th 2009.
- ^ John McWhorter,"No Tears For Dead Tongues"[2], Forbes,2/21/2008 @ 6:00PM.
- ^ Westrum, "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik," p. 137
- ^ Jacques, Guillaume (2023). "Periodic tense markers in the world's languages and their sources". Folia Linguistica. 57 (3): 539–562. doi:10.1515/flin-2023-2013.
- ^ Taken from Jones, "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", p. 130
References
[edit]- Jones, Linda K. (1992), "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", in Hwang, Shin Ja J.; Merrifield, William R. (eds.), Language in context: Essays for Robert E. Longacre (PDF), Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 107, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington, pp. 127–36, archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-16
- Matthews, Delle P. (1990), "The Berik Literacy Program: From Illiteracy to National Language Proficiency", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya, 18: 109–24
- McWhorter, John (21 March 2008), "No Tears for Dead Tongues", Forbes, retrieved 2011-05-09
- Westrum, Peter N. (1988), "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya, 16: 137