| West Damar | |
| Also Known As: | North Damar |
| Nativename: | Damar Batumerah |
| States: | Indonesia |
| Region: | Maluku Islands |
| Speakers: | 800 |
| Date: | 1987 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Fam2: | Malayo-Polynesian |
| Fam3: | Central–Eastern |
| Fam4: | Babar |
| Iso3: | drn |
| Glotto: | west2548 |
| Glottorefname: | West Damar |
West Damar, or North Damar, is an Austronesian language of Damar Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. In spite of rather low cognacy rates with its neighboring languages,[1] it can be classified as part of the Babar languages based on qualitative evidence.[2]
It is spoken in two villages (Batumerah, Kuai) located in the north-western part of Damar.[3]
The consonant inventory of West Damar is as follows:[4]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive/Affricate | voiceless | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | ||
| voiced | (b) | d | (ɡ) | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Fricative | s | x | h | ||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximant | w | j | |||||
The vowel inventory of West Damar is simply pronounced as //a e i o u//.
A few aspects of West Damar morphology are noted as follows.[4]
Verbs in West Damar are conjugated according to person and number.
| 1st sg. | w- | woni | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2nd sg. | m- | moni | ||
| 3rd sg. | n- [5] | yoni | n-poko "explodes", n-woludlo "hunts", n-hakro "boils", n-dekro "is dry", ng-kerso "is thin", | |
| 1st pl. inclusive | k-, t- | toni | k-la "we go", k-wadano "we hear", k-hoto "we talk", k-mattuni "we sleep", k-nehi "we run" | |
| 1st pl. exclusive | m- | moni | ||
| 2nd pl. | m- -y-,[6] ms- | msoni | mlyo "you go", mnyedi "you fall" | |
| 3rd pl. | r- | roni |
West Damar has a series of possessive suffixes that are attached to nouns. There is no possessive verb. The possessive suffixes are as follows:
| 1st sg. | -cheni | |
|---|---|---|
| 2nd sg. | -mcheni | |
| 3rd sg. | -eni | |
| 1st pl. inclusive | -toni | |
| 1st pl. exclusive | -moni | |
| 2nd pl. | -mseni | |
| 3rd pl. | -roni |
The possessive suffixes are built from a base suffix -ni that also appears as a lexical derivational suffix:
The word for "no" in West Damar is kewe. When split into a circumfix, ke- -we serves as a simple negator for content words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The -we part of the negator comes immediately after the stem it attaches to, but before other clitics. A few examples of negation provided by Chlenova are as follows:
Another negative predicative word krawui "unavailable" is also recorded.
Vocabulary list:
| West Damar | Indonesian | English | |
|---|---|---|---|
| odo | Indonesian: saya | I | |
| ede | Indonesian: engkau | you (sing.) | |
| idi | Indonesian: dia | he, she | |
| itito | Indonesian: kita | we (incl.) | |
| odomo | Indonesian: kami | we (exc.) | |
| edmi | Indonesian: kamu | you (pl.) | |
| idiro | Indonesian: mereka | they | |
| mehno | Indonesian: satu | one | |
| wyeru | Indonesian: dua | two | |
| wyetteli | Indonesian: tiga | three | |
| wyoto | Indonesian: empat | four | |
| wilimo | Indonesian: lima | five | |
| wyenamo | Indonesian: enam | six | |
| witi | Indonesian: tujuh | seven | |
| way | Indonesian: delapan | eight | |
| wisi | Indonesian: sembilan | nine | |
| uswuti | Indonesian: sepuluh | ten | |
| ulkona | Indonesian: kepala | head | |
| lima | Indonesian: tangan | hand | |
| eya | Indonesian: kaki | foot |
- Are you ill?
- Yes, I have a headache.
- The mountain Binaya is the highest at the Seram island.