Wetarese language

Wetarese is an Austronesian language of Wetar, an island in the south Maluku, Indonesia, and of the nearby island Liran.^[2]

Wetarese
Wetar
Tutunohan
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Wetar Island
Native speakers	(11,000 cited 1990–2010)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central–Eastern Timoric Wetar–Galoli Wetarese
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: apx – Aputai ilu – Iliʼuun wet – Perai tzn – Tugun
Glottolog	weta1245
ELP	Aputai

Background

The four identified principal varieties of Wetarese on Wetar – Aputai, Iliʼuun, Perai and Tugun – are distinct enough that some may consider them to be different languages.

Wetarese is closely related to Galoli (spoken on the north coast of East Timor and by an immigrant community on the south coast of Wetar) and to Atauran (spoken on Atauro island).

Phonology

The following represents the Tugun dialect:^[3]

Consonants

Consonant phonemes^[3]

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k	ʔ
	voiced			dʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s			h
	voiced	v
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Tap/Trill			ɾ ~ r
Lateral			l

• /v/ may also be heard as [w] in free variation.^[3]
• /r/ is mainly heard as [r] in word-final position or in slower speech, it is heard as [ɾ] elsewhere.^[3]
• /ʔ/ only occurs in word-medial positions.^[3]

Vowels

Vowel phonemes^[3]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open		a

• Sounds /e u/ are also heard as [ɛ ʊ].^[3]

Citations

1. Aputai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Iliʼuun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Perai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Tugun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Hull, Geoffrey (2002), The Languages of East Timor: Some Basic Facts (PDF), Instituto Nacional de Linguística, Universidade Nacional de Timor Lorosa'e
3. Hinton (2000), p. 115

References

• Hinton, Bryan D. (2000). "The languages of Wetar: recent survey results and word lists with notes on Tugun grammar". In Grimes, Charles E. (ed.). Spices from the East: Papers in Languages of Eastern Indonesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 105–129. doi:10.15144/PL-503.105. hdl:1885/146101.