Savu | |
Region: | Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia |
Familycolor: | Austronesian |
Fam1: | Unclear, perhaps Austronesian |
Fam3: | Sumba–Flores ? |
Child1: | Hawu |
Child2: | Dhao |
Glotto: | hawu1234 |
Glottorefname: | Hawu–Dhao |
Map: | Savu languages.png |
The Savu languages, Hawu and Dhao, are spoken on Savu and Ndao Islands in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.
Cappell (1975) noted a large amount of non-Austronesian vocabulary and grammatical features in the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages of East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku, notably in Hawu. While he generally spoke of a non-Austronesian substratum, Hawu is so divergent from Austronesian norms that he classified it (and Dhao) as a non-Austronesian language. He says,