Biak language
| Biak | |
|---|---|
| Biak-Numfor | |
| wós Vyak; wós kovedi | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Biak Island & surroundings |
|
Native speakers
|
30,000 (2000) |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | biak1248 |
Biak (wós Vyak or "Biak language"; wós kovedi or "our language"; Bahasa Indonesia: Bahasa Biak), also known as Biak-Numfor, Noefoor, Mafoor, Mefoor, Nufoor, Mafoorsch, Myfoorsch and Noefoorsch, is an Austronesian language that has been classified as one of 41 languages of the South Halmahera-West New Guinea subgroup of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Languages.
It is spoken by about 30,000 people in Biak and Numfor and numerous small islands in the Schouten Islands archipelago, located in Papua province of Western New Guniea, northeastern Indonesia.
There are a number of different dialects of Biak spoken on various different Islands the most well-known being Biak-Numfoor, spoken on the Island of Numfoor, these dialect differences are small and mostly slight regular sound changes. Almost all Biak speakers are also fluent in Malay, but very few have a comprehensive knowledge of formal Indonesian.
Despite the comparatively high number of speakers compared to some other Austronesian languages, Biak is still in danger of extinction. Within the main towns the generation of speakers aged between 20 and 50 have only passive knowledge of the language and rarely use the language actively, instead preferring to use Malay. Younger generations do not even generally have passive knowledge of the language. Biak is only actively used as a spoken language by members of the community over 50 years of age or so and even they regularly code switch into Malay. However, within the villages further from town there were still children who were fluent in Biak. Songs in Biak are also very popular throughout the Islands.
There is a strong initiative to promote the use of Biak Language, with translations of various books and teaching manuals as well as a radio station and a number of church services throughout the year being conducted solely in Biak. Since 2002 there has also been an initiative to introduce Biak being taught formerly in schools on the Islands.
Biak has a phoneme inventory consisting of 13 consonants and 5 vowels, in which vowel length is phonemic. In the orthography long vowels are written with an acute accent. The phoneme /t/ is very infrequent in its use and some older speakers still realise it as [s] in loanwords.
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Wikipedia