Meriam language
| Meriam | |
|---|---|
| Eastern Torres Strait | |
| Region | Murray Island, Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia |
| Ethnicity | Meriam |
|
Native speakers
|
160 (2005) to 210 (2006 census) |
|
Eastern Trans-Fly
|
|
| Eastern Torres Strait Islander Sign Language | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | meri1244 |
| AIATSIS | Y3 |
Meriam (in the language itself Meriam Mìr; also Miriam, Meryam, Mer, Mir, Miriam-Mir, etc. and Eastern, Isten, Esten, , and Able Able) or the Eastern Torres Strait language is the language of the people of the small islands of Mer (Murray Island), Waier and Dauar, Erub (Darnley Island), and Ugar (Stephens Island) in the eastern Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. In the Western Torres Strait language, Kalaw Lagaw Ya, it is called Mœyam or Mœyamau Ya. It is the only Papuan language on Australian territory.
Meriam was classified in the Eastern Trans-Fly family of Trans–New Guinea by Stephen Wurm, who however felt that these have retained remnants of pre-Trans–New Guinea languages; this is followed by Ethnologue (2005). In 2005 Malcolm Ross concluded that the Eastern Trans-Fly languages were not part of the Trans–New Guinea phylum, though kept the family intact with Meriam as a member. R. M. W. Dixon (2002) regards claims of a relationship between the Fly River languages and Meriam as unproven, though what he bases his claim on is not clear, as Meriam Mir has a high cognation rate with its sister languages (see below), and a certain amount of mutual intelligibility is claimed by Meriam speakers. Such Trans-Fly cognates include personal pronouns and verbal and nominal morphology. Mitchell and Piper (unpublished paper) find that Meriam Mìr has 78% cognates with its sister Trans-Fly Papuan languages, the remaining vocabulary being mainly of Australian origin.
Meriam has around 40 percent of its vocabulary in common with its unrelated Western Torres Strait neighbour Kala Lagaw Ya, which is an Australian language (Mitchell and Piper, unpublished research notes, based on Mitchell 1995). The shared words cover a wide range of semantic domains (body parts, kin, human classification, language, mythology, ceremony, artefacts, topography, natural elements, marine life, qualities, locations, directions and time), though not verbs. This latter strengthens arguments about genetic diversity, however there is still much to suggest mutual influence. The common vocabulary range from "exact cognates" to words that appear related, but have undergone semantic changes, as in the following from a list of 250 items (Mitchell 1995):
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