Sawai

Sawai (also Weda) is a South Halmahera-Western New Guinea language of Austronesian stock spoken in Weda and Gane Timor districts of southern Halmahera, northern Maluku Providence, Indonesia. There are approximately 12,000 speakers.

Contents

1 Sounds 1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels 1.3 Syllable 2 Links 3 Bibliography

Sounds

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

Consonants

Sewai has 13 consonants:

		Bilabial	Labio-velar	Labio-dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop		b			t     d		k    ɡ
Nasal		m			n		ŋ
Fricative				f	s
Approximant	central		w
	lateral				l

Vowels

The 7 vowels of Sawai:

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
High-mid	e		o
Low-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

Syllable

Sawai has the following syllable structure:

(C)(C)V(C)

Examples:

word	gloss	syllable type
/i/	's/he/it'	V
/in/	'fish'	VC
/wo/	'alcoholic drink'	CV
/npo/	's/he/it gives'	CCV
/kot/	'magic statue'	CVC
/nfan/	's/he/it goes'	CCVC

Links

• Sawai (Ethnologue)

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. ISBN 0-88312-803-9.
• 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.
• Whisler, Ronald; & Whisler, 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.