Language name and locationː Maklew, Papua province, Indonesia [Ref to Ethnologue]
语言名称和分布地区: 马克莱语, 印度尼西亚巴布亚省南部梅克拉县

 

1. mepɔla

2. inaɡe

3. mepɔla inaɡe (1+2)

4. inaɡe inaɡe (2+2)

5. blmepɔla

10. blŋuka-blŋuka

 

Linguist providing data and dateː Dr. Tina Gregor, Department of Linguistics, the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, October 10, October 20, 2015. Data provided by speakers from Welbuti (Lat. -7.45366, Long. 139. 30294)
提供资
的语言家: Dr. Tina Gregor, 2015 年 10 月 10 日, 10 月 20 日.

 

Other comments: Maklew has only few words for numbers. Maklew is spoken by about 100 speakers in Papua province: Merauke regency, Welbuti village; south coast area. To my knowledge all speakers of Yelmek and Maklew also speak the local variety of Bahasa Indonesia and there is a lot of code mixing going on. Therefore, they use the Indonesian numbers in normal circumstances. I don’t have the impression that there is phonological adoption, but I might just not be aware of it.    

    In Yelmek, the word for hand is /alpɔ/, which apparently does not have anything to do with counting. In Maklew the word is /bl/, which makes five ‘one hand’. it seems to be used for ‘ten’ too, but I don’t know what the other part in the word and they spelled /bl/ as part of the word in both cases. To make it even more confusing, at some point they gave me /blinage-blmepola/ as the equivalent of ‘three’ and I think I have seen the prefix in other cases to mean ‘one further’. Moreover, when I ask for an example sentence for ‘ten’, he spontaneously gave me a sentence, which translates as ‘I have five male dogs and five female dogs’  meaning he has ten dogs, so I am not sure if this ‘ten’ is really used for counting.


 Back >> [ Home ] >> [ Trans-New Guinea ] >> [ Finisterre-Huon ] >>
 
[ Kainantu-Goroka ] >> [ Madang ] >> [ Ok-Awyu ] >>
 
[ Southeast Papuan ] >> [ West Papuan-Timor-Alor-Pantar ] >>
  
[ West Papuan ] >> [ Other Papuan languages ]