Raja Ampat–South Halmahera languages

The Raja Ampat–South Halmahera languages are a branch of Malayo-Polynesian languages of eastern Indonesia. They are spoken on islands in the Halmahera Sea, and on its margins from the south-eastern coast of Halmahera to the Raja Ampat Islands off the western tip of New Guinea.

Raja Ampat–South Halmahera
Halmahera Sea
Geographic distribution	Halmahera Sea and Raja Ampat Islands
Linguistic classification	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Eastern Malayo-Polynesian South Halmahera–West New Guinea Raja Ampat–South Halmahera
Glottolog	raja1255

The languages of the Raja Ampat Islands show a strong Papuan substratum influence; it is not clear that they are actually Austronesian as opposed to relexified Papuan languages.^[1]

Remijsen (2001) and Blust (1978) linked the languages of Raja Ampat to the South Halmahera languages. David Kamholz (2014) breaks up Raja Ampat, so that the structure of the Halmahera Sea languages is as follows:^[2]

• South Halmahera
• Ambel–Biga: Waigeo (Ambel), Biga
• As
• Salawati
• Maya–Matbat: Matbat, Ma'ya (Salawati, Laganyan (Legenyem), Wauyai, Kawe, Misool)

References

1. • Remijsen, Albert Clementina Ludovicus (2001). Word-prosodic systems of Raja Ampat languages (PDF). Utrecht: LOT. ISBN 978-90-76864-09-9.
2. Kamholz, David (2014). Austronesians in Papua: Diversification and change in South Halmahera–West New Guinea Archived 2021-08-17 at the Wayback Machine. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8zg8b1vd