Mailuan | |
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Geographic distribution |
Southeastern peninsula of New Guinea |
Linguistic classification |
Trans–New Guinea
|
Glottolog | mail1249 |
The Mailuan languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea (TNG), but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely related to each other than they are to other TNG families.
The languages are,
All share about 50% vocabulary. Pronouns are:
Dutton (1971) said Bauwaki was a link to the Yareban languages. It has greater lexical similarity with Aneme Wake (Yareban) than the closest Mailuan language, Domu. Magi shows evidence of language shift from an Oceanic language in a large number of Oceanic words.