| Batuley | |
| States: | Indonesia |
| Region: | Aru Islands |
| Speakers: | 3,600 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Fam2: | Malayo-Polynesian |
| Fam3: | Central–Eastern |
| Fam4: | Aru |
| Iso3: | bay |
| Glotto: | batu1258 |
| Glottorefname: | Batuley |
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 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.
Batuley has a simple five-vowel system with no vowel length distinction (Daigle 2015).
pronounced as /[ɪ]/ is an allophone of pronounced as //i// and pronounced as //e// (in different environments). pronounced as /[e]/ is an allophone of pronounced as //a// when it does not receive the primary stress. Furthermore, pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //i// may both be reduced to a schwa in fast speech in certain conditions.
Daigle (2015)
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| Plosive | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Rhotic | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Semivowel | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
Daigle (2015)