Loading AI tools
Austronesian language spoken in Papua New Guinea From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tami is an Austronesian language on the Tami Islands and in a few villages at the tip of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It is not closely related to the other Huon Gulf languages, but like other North New Guinea languages in Morobe Province, its basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO).
Tami | |
---|---|
Native to | Papua New Guinea |
Region | Morobe Province |
Native speakers | 2,100 (2010)[1] |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | tmy |
Glottolog | tami1290 |
Tami distinguishes five vowels (i, e, a, o, u) and the following consonants (Colich 1995). Voiced obstruents do not occur in syllable-final position, while glottal stop only occurs at the end of a syllable.
Bilabial | Labiovelar | Dental | Alveopalatal | Velar | Glottal | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voiceless | p | pw | t | k | -c [ʔ] | |
Voiced | b | bw | d | j [d͡ʒ] | g | |
Prenasalized | mb | mbw | nd | nj | ŋg | |
Nasal | m | mw | n | ŋ | ||
Fricative | v [β] | s | ||||
Liquid | l | |||||
Approximant | w | y | ||||
Traditional Tami counting practices begin with the fingers of the hands, then continue on the feet to reach twenty, which translates as 'whole person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'whole person'. Nowadays, most counting above five is done in Tok Pisin. An alternate form of the numeral 'one', dan, functions as an indefinite article. Distributive numerals are formed via reduplication: lualu 'two by two', tolatol 'three by three' and so forth (Bamler 1900:204).
Numeral | Term | Gloss |
---|---|---|
1 | te | 'one' |
2 | lu | 'two' |
3 | tol | 'three' |
4 | pat | 'four' |
5 | lim | 'five, hand' |
6 | lim ma te | 'hand and one' |
7 | lima ma lu | 'hand and two' |
8 | lima ma tol | 'hand and three' |
9 | lim ma pat | 'hand and four' |
10 | limantalu | 'hands both' |
20 | damo monte | 'person whole' |
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.