What makes Papuan languages so unique? - features from the area with the most languages
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ค. 2022
- Melanesia is the place with the most languages on earth, most of which are Papuan. These are the features that set them apart from surrounding language families.
Solidarity: docs.google.com/document/d/1y...
Voices: docs.google.com/document/d/1s...
Sources: docs.google.com/document/d/1E...
The Papuan languages are traditionally said to be the old non-Austronesian and non-Australian languages of Melanesia. What makes Papuan languages "Papuan"? And what are the real relations between Melanesian, Oceanic and Austronesian languages? How are these tied to the people and their "langriculture" from the last video?
Art and animation by me, with pics from sources above.
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Most sounds by the Sawos people of Toremby village, recorded by Dr. Tyman: www.johntyman.com/sawos/sfx.html
I am reminded of the "Palaeosiberian" language family, which was basically "all the languages in Siberia which aren't Tungusic". In fact it is what biologists call a "taxonomic wastebin" which just includes all the things that don't fit. In that case, though, with only a dozen or so languages, it is much easier to analyse!
The more common term for that is "residual category" but, talking about language, there are some funny linguistic parallels between "taxonimc wastebin" and "residual category": both phrases are comprised of a somewhat learnéd adjective following a commonplace noun but the semantics of each element are reversed, with "residual" and being linked to "waste" (just like "wastebin") while "categories" belong to taxonomy.
It would be difficult to say that there's anything that the paleo-siberian languages have in common with each other that they don't have in common with turkic, tungusic, mongolic, or uralic.
The so-called "Nilo-Saharan" languages of Northern/Eastern Africa are similar, basically just "all the languages in the Northern half of Africa which aren't Afroasiatic or Niger-Congo".
I don't think the Palaeosiberian languages have ever been considered a "language family".
@@taimunozhan "Residue" does not commentate on value, though "waste" does.
The Papuasphere is so diverse and isn't talked about enough. Such wonderful and interesting languages those areas have!
Yeah, hope more people will talk about it, their rich linguistic diversity shall not be lost.
There, what you have done I see!
*talked
@@gtc239 nah cringe less languages is better,you can’t communicate and that’s bad,only if they speak another language that is more spoken
half of that island has been suffering a silenced genocide for over 60 years, 1.8 million dead, world's biggest goldmine, u.s. operated. the UN just laughed in their faces again, on the same day that they had a full eclipse.
academics can be fascinated, but ime understanding papuan requires song, valleys to sing across, and a life with nature instead of on top of it.
Another piece of love for the Papuasphere, this time with more grammar.
Always happy for another video from you
It would be so amazing if you made a video on Yiddish history as a Yiddish speaker!
@@comeanomalocaris8267 Oooh yes, excellent language!
@@comeanomalocaris8267 as a Yiddish learner I agree
Please make javanese language
Indonesian here. Your example of Austronesian word starting with ng- had me rolling. You made me "ngakak". You're an amazing linguist so I'm sure you know what the word means, it's just not a word that I expect to see from a non-Indonesian. Shows how far and wide you studied these languages.
(*) Ngakak is like "lol" in English, a very informal way to express the act of laughing loudly and continuously.
Free West Papua
@@azhariusman9428 Free West Papua deez nutz
Free the West 🤙🏾
@@thvtsydneylyf3th077 West papua is Indonesia
@@azhariusman9428 Buy 2 Hawaii, 1 Free West Papua
NativLang is the best language channel on TH-cam by a country mile - the animations, the intonation in the narration (not just reading a text) and the detail delivered in simplicity all make it the best
You don't think polýMATHY is close?
Xidnaf?
Tom Scott does Linguistic videos as well, but they are no where near as intricate as these, so I'm excluding him.
Agree. He does a very good job
@@cerebrummaximus3762 That Thai alphabet one was pretty poorly made tbh
Papuan typology is perhaps one of my most favorite topics in all of linguistics! Hopefully I will get to study it more in-depth later in my university linguistics education ^.^
I know of two unrelated Papuan languages that count in base 6: Yam languages such as Arammba, and Ndom. Arammba can count up to 279935. I don't know if Ndom can count past 215.
Yali and Dani have possessive prefixes: nabelan-kabelan (literally my skin your skin, loosely metamorphosis or resurrection, or is that Sawi remon?). Indonesian has possessive suffixes.
Fataluco, tetún, y portugués (Papuan, Austronesian, and Indo-European), all spoken in East Timor.
There's a sentence in Asaro or Gahuku (I forget which, they're closely related) in which the word order is the reverse of English: Muli mako alitove loko, taoni loka vitove. Lemon some buy-will-I saying, town to go-will-I. I'm going to town to buy some lemons.
Português, with a ê, not a é
do u think tetum has influences from papuan languages?
@@alexandrejosedacostaneto381 maybe OP mix it with indonesian dictionary spelling?
@@alexandrejosedacostaneto381 to be fair, the poster is probably using spanish spelling there. hence "y protugués" instead of "e português". they also wrote "tetún" instead of "tetum".
@@Adhjie the poster is probably using spanish spelling there. hence "y protugués" instead of "e português". they also wrote "tetún" instead of "tetum".
in indonesian, "portuguese/portugués/português" would be "bahasa portugis".
I stopped in the middle of the podcast I was listening to when the notification popped to come watch this video. New NativLang video = a good day!
Interesting that Papua shares this abundance of co-articulated and pre-nasalized stops with West Africa. I wonder if this was part of the reason why European explorers were reminded of Guinea when they came there, and thus named the island New Guinea.
mot impossible, but it was probably just the skin tone tbh.
@@profeseurchemical And don't forget the jungle!
More likely climate lol
It was because of the feather headdress
Hi there I'm from PNG but I speak my language falls under Papuan Tip, western oceanic branch of Oceanic branch of Austronesian, but our word order is SOV influenced by neighbouring Papuan Languages.
Eg.
Pupu ġarena malaopa enanurato/Au tupuku ġarena malaopa enanurato.
Pupu ġarena = granny
Au = me
tupuku = my granparent
ġarena = female/woman
Malaopa = yam/yams
Enanurato = she/he cooked them.
That glowing red hanging flower we call it ġara in my language, in English I think it's called Flame of the forest?
.
beautiful and ingesting!!!
PNG is an image format, and for few seconds I was confused on what you meant lol
This is _very_ interesting, thank you for sharing!
Interesting. I don't see any consonant clusters in your example text. Does your language have them at all? (Austronesian languages usually don't. English, in contrast, has words like "schmaltz", "twelfths", "borscht", and "strengths".)
Please make a channel for learning your language
@@jonadabtheunsightly Yep; though, half of those examples are loanwords: ”Schmaltz”, from German; and: ”Borscht”, from Russian/Ukrainian. Also, Finnish has some consonant clusters, too: ”Verstas” (”Workshop”), ”Porstua” (”Porch”), etc.
This reminded me in many ways of your video on Caucasian languages: groups isolated by geography who speak idiosyncratic languages. But with a radically different approach to consonants than Georgian or Chechen. 😀
I do wish you wouldn't be so hesitant to actually dive into the linguistics of it all. I feel that most of your viewers would be able to follow, and enjoy the deep dive! Coming out of this video without even an example sentence in the language in question makes it feel a bit shallowly delivered.
Just a bit of constructive criticism, I still love your videos and am thankful you contribute to the niche topic on this platform!
It's a good day when a new video of yours comes out.
I have always felt there is something unique in the way Papuan stand-up comedians set up their stories.
Now I realize that their storytelling are still built around nouns even when performing in Indonesian.
Thank you for the enlightenment.
So happy you followed up with another Niugini video! It would have been a beautifully artistic (but herculean) task to map even the conservative accepted number of Papuan language families from eastern Nusantara to the Solomons, like the way you did for the African language families video. I like how you briefly touched on the migration history of the area to give some context of the languages in relation to Austronesian. I believe recent human genetic clustering studies show that there are 3-4 or more hyper distinct genetic clusters in the area that have more genetic distance than most human populations across the globe have with each other (i.e. they are the product of several very ancient separate migrations). Since you're a language-based educator, it is understandable that you would not cover this topic though.
My father is Western Torres Strait Islander where the Australian language is spoken (Kala Lagaw Ya), and my mother is Eastern Torres Strait Islander where the Papuan language is spoken (Meriam Mir). Both languages have Austronesian influences. The theory behind it is, the western islands was inhabited originally by Australian Aboriginals, followed by seafaring Papuan-Austronesians who settled in the uninhabited eastern islands thus retaining its Papuan language but when they settled on the western islands, they mixed with the Australian population, who managed to keep the Australian language despite western Torres Strait Islanders today being more culturally Papuan/Pacific than Australian
I’d absolutely love to see more videos by you about Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander languages as an Aboriginal person
I am in favour of you pushing your channel boundaries. You making stuff that interests you will always be more interesting than the alternative.
Oh hell yeah, the big man’s back
I was waiting so much for your video and here it is! Thank You for making content like that!
Oh wow, a new video from you! Glad you're still uploading, NativLang!
Thank you, Kawp-kun, Kiitos, Danke, Spasiba, XieXie!
A new linguistic adventure from NativLang, the best birthday present 🥳 🎉
Happy Birthday! 🎂
I'm glad you're making content again, I always enjoyed your style
Absolutely facinating. I've always been intrigued by the unique language area. Definately well worth the wait :)
Love the new layout again
I’m normally able to keep up with most things, but it just went right over my head today, guess I’ll have to come back tomorrow for round 2
Hah, same here.
I usually listen when I'm about to sleep since his voice is soothing.
Every time I think this channel is dead and isn't coming back, you post a new video!
Great work NativLang! I’m always so excited to see another one of these masterpieces. Each one of your videos opens up a new door to another world through the eyes of a unique language and its people. I came to love to learn about the many tongues of the world thanks to this channel, so for that I thank you, NativLang. I hope this channel continues to grow, and that everyone can enjoy these videos.
Beautiful languages,
Staying on the theme you can do Australian and Amazonian langauges next
There’s so much more to the region, we’re barely scratching the surface. On my channel I have an example of Ternate, a West Papuan language from North Maluku, and it exemplifies the definition of “everything that’s not Austronesian” because it’s not easy to make connections to the languages in Papua / New Guinea.
I highly appreciate it. Only a video once in a while but the quality is unmatched, especially given that you open a world to places that are otherwise neglected and little known about. 👍
thank you for making another great video !! keep up the amazing work !! we all greatly appreciate it :).
i'm glad you're uploading again, love your content
Always nice to see a video from you! if you're taking requests, I would love another video on dating languages and families. This time, with a focus on how we can apply some dates, along with our best attempts at actually dating languages and families.
The wait for your vids are always worth it.
So happy to see new videos from you!
Absolutely love your videos. Really insightful and lovely animation!
it would be great if you did a video on Indigenous languages throughout Australia and how many of them are from the same family
You can't even imagine how happy I am that you posted a new video!!
Great topic and video!! Being from Australia the second I learned about Papuan languages as a kid I was completely fascinated.
Always love to see a vid from you!
Just catching this video and really appreciate the "Aotearoa" in the first half ♥
Thank you so much, love your channel and your manner of teaching us so many interesting things about languages!
Long time no see NativLang. I am livin in Papua currently, and I am telling you, even 1km away neighbour's language is completely different with one another. 😂 like there is no sprachbund
I'm lovin' this Papuasphere series! So many interesting new ideas!
I’m fighting some tough illness, and I wanted to thank you because your videos offer a pleasant respite
This series is great! I would love if you made a follow-up series about austronesian langs.
Yes, please!
This is incredible. It feels like every single sentence hints at other stuff that could easily fill its own video.
Good to have you back!
Hello NativLang! This was an awesome video and Papuan languages are certainly very interesting! I was wondering if you could make a video on the Inuit languages and specifically Greenlandic/Kalaallisut? They're super under-covered and they have some super interesting grammatical features! I myself have been learning Greenlandic for about a year by now and it's very hard to learn but also very fun :)
so glad you are back
Great to see you back :)
The words appearing in time with the birdsong at the beginning was such a nice touch
this channel is a gift to humanity!
Love the grammar heavy episodes!! My favorite ones
Truly educational and interesting. Thanks 👍
You always make me wait but you never disappoint
Awesome video!
It’s almost like the order of words for the American Sign Language.
This was a wonderful video! As a person who is now learning an Astronesian language, it was very interesting to see how these two language families compare. Thank you! ❤️
Every time you eat banana, just remember that this healthy and delicious fruit is a contribution of Papuan people to the world in the prehistoric time.
Thank you for making a followup with more linguistics since I didn't really get the last video.
Love the new video
Thank you for this video! 😀🌹
My native dialect of Portuguese has final negation in informal registers. While standard Portugues would have “Eu não quero inhame” (I NEG want-I.PRESENT yam) for “I don’t want yams” I might say that, or “Quero inhame não” (want-I.PRESENT yam NEG) depending on who I’m talking to.
It also has double negation for emphasis. If I really hate yams, I could say “Eu não quero inhame não” or “Eu não quero não inhame”. Speakers of other dialects are sometimes confused by that, since they only have implied double negatives (like in AAVE “I didn’t do nothing”), not explicit double negatives.
I love it when I hear about a rare and “obscure” linguistic feature and I’m like “wait, I do that”.
Some Dominican Spanish speakers use double negation too
Most times double negation is the standard way for some people to negate things, no enforcement intended
Double negation and post negation are definitely not rare. Just look at French, which shaped much of modern Portuguese.
Your dialect most likely was influenced by African languages, a common theme in northeastern Brazil.
Never clicked so fast lol
Only on the island of Niugini there are more than 850 languages, about 500 of them are still alive. But your example of language syntax is mostly from Tok Pisin, a language that was invented in the middle of the 19th century, so the Germans could talk (give orders?) to the Chinese and Malaj people. This language, Tok Pisin, was very rudimentary in the beginning but has matured and is now the official language in PNG, together with English. Tok Pisin is a mix of English and lokal languages, e.g. airplane is Balus, which is a local word for butterfly in ENB (Rabaul). Has Tok Pisin also got it language syntax from the local languages?
Now I know about Papuan languages, but you mentioned austronesian languages so much now I need to research those! Maybe an Austronesian video sometime?
My high-school geography teacher (I went to high-school back in the '70s) worked for a while with one of the highland tribes in PNG.
I even remember the tribe name - it was the Enga tribe!
Another great video by you! Interesting that the Papuan languages weren’t endemic to the island. It’s also cool how many groups used different base number systems, it would be interesting to see what caused them to create these diverse systems of counting.
🎉🎉 another informative and interesting video from you
Great ! A new video!
Man your videos on PNG have been great, we really should know more about the Papuan Languages and PNG & Indonesia in general here in Australia
I hope you never stop with these videos in general but would wish more on North American native languages if I had a wish to make
OMG Thank you soooo much!
Im from eastern highlands of papua new guinea . The word girl .
My people called 'Abade ' for girl and the other neighboring villages called the same word but slightly twisted
Amane
Afane
Amfane
Afade
They all mean the same, refers to the word girl.
and for the word boy,
Bade
Mane
Fade
Fane
Same vowls pronunciation, letter b, d, f, n, m to sound the word different. The further the village away from you the word changes completely so as the vowls. But few times your neighbor speaks a complete different language all together. Thats how I think we have so many languages.
Just sharing 😊✌️
I definitely want more videos about Papuan languages and cultures!
Thanks for an awesome video
Super cool video, maybe I'll tell Marian Klamer about it. She might be able to use it in her lectures even. (she was my BA thesis supervisor)
I've missed you NativLang!!!
Awesome video!
Yes another NativLang video, keep up the good work!!
keep it up with the vids my guy👍
I always appreciate your contents! Have you ever thought of making a video about the Italian languages? I'm particularly fascinated about the evolution of the gender system in the central/southern ones.
This new style is looking nice!
Great vid!
Interesting how simillar the described grammar of Papuan languages (though I'm sure there a very large amount of variation among them and these are just general trends) is to Japanese. From the word order and verb suffixes (I think, I'm still not entirely sure how Japanese verbs work), to the lack of plural nouns, complex pronouns (that nonetheless tend to disregard the third person) and finally the topic-based sentence structure, all that makes me wonder if there's some connection. If so, it would be a _very_ old connection and it's more likely just a coincidence, otherwise surely someone else would have picked up on it already. But it's certainly an interesting coincidence.
There probably is no connection tbh. Japan and New Guinea are too far away from each other
@@viracocha6093 Madagascar is "too far" from the indo-pacific yet we are still able to give evidence that the austronesians migrated there. If we take a claim that papuan and japanese (perhaps pre-yayoi and pre-jomon) languages are related then their similarities in grammar would point to that. Perhaps there were two populations of papuans that diverged from the urheimat; one population ended up in the japanese archipelago who were then subsequently/possibly genocided and another population migrated south towards Niugini. Genetic evidence of papuan admixture in modern japanese might shed light on this but I'm unaware of any studies.
I can honestly see some similarities between Papuan and Hungarian - the agglutinatinaveness of both of them,the irrelevance of plural forms (altho in case of Hungarian only if the number is mentioned,so like "3 chair" but "those chairs"),the head marking in possession,lack of passive voice (I mean it technically exists,but only for a few verbs and it isn't generally used),the presence of double negation,the storytelling bit reminds me of the topic-focus-verb-the rest Hungarian sentence order. So even the complex coincidences like that tend to pop up from time to time. My favourite English-Hungarian coincidence to this day,tho is the Hungarian word for "human",which is "ember". With many mythologies either associating the creation of a man with fire or sketching some ties between fire and humanity (the myth of Prometeus) or a human soul and fire it just seems so poetic,despite being this complete coincidence
@@Riot076 But even funnier is that ember sounds like the Finnish word ämpäri which means a bucket :P
Lovely vid!!!!
I loved the sign mention:) Would you consider collaborating with a sign expert on some videos?
Do you have a video in the making dedicated to just Australian languages? I'd love to know more about them, the diversity and how they relate to one another
I'd like it as well
I'd like it as well
Never underestimate the value of the enlightenment that you bring with this channel that would otherwise go unknown.
"Not Austronesian" and "Not Australian" isn't enough to be a unique family. I'm not even sure it's enough to be a sprachbund. RWM Dixon is an Australianist who has thought a lot about a related sprachbund, the Australian languages. My suspicion is that, in both cases, they are very ancient sprachbunds that can no longer be recovered.
I think a closer look at the geography and intertribe relationships as well as the settling history would help to decide, if there has ever been a sprachbund at all. But of course all that must remain speculation looking at the scarce data to be found. I agree though that not being austronesian doesn‘t establish a language family based on one common ancestor.
I'm lucky enough that I learned my mothers mother' tongue, Sinaki (swp). It's a Papuan Tip language in Western Suau Province of Milne Bay. Our particular dialect is spoke by maybe 300-400 people at most. I walk 1 hour down the beach to the next village and I can only vaguely understand what the villagers say in the village down the road. The languages are similar in origin, that much is obvious but as a speaker, it's difficult to understand, it is almost like a different language if German and Dutch are two different language or like a Euskara speaker trying to understand a Puerto Rican Spanish speaker.
It's funny that in English you can kind of use OSV: Yams, grandma cooked. But that's the exact opposite from SOV. The "SV" part is ingrained in me pretty deep, while the O can just kind of float around wherever it wants, so long as it's not getting between S and V. But the "noun noun verb" order itself isn't so foreign.
Anyway, let me try to write a sentence with grammar reminiscent of Papuan languages to see whether I've absorbed what this video is about. How about something like "The yams we'll eat are tasty because grandma will cook them"? I guess that'd turn out something like... "So yam, grandma yam em-cook'll-her, us yam em-eat'll-us, since grandma yam em-cook'll-her, yam tasty'll-em"?
I guess I don't really know enough about how a word like "tasty" works here though. It's not a noun, so I don't know how it'd be marked on the verb. I guess I'm treating it like a stative verb here, but I'm not sure that's idiomatic. I'm also unsure how to specify tense in subclauses. Is it all future tense? I'm assuming so, but you could perhaps also get a "past-in-the-future" sort of sentence.
Interesting stuff nevertheless.
So, relative clause, for OSV in English, I think. Comma there, there is. Comma necessary, I say, and you notice. Like a Papuan storyteller, I talk. Using relative clauses, I do.
Finally, we live to see it.
I really love your videos.
Could you talk about Australian languages?
aboriginie
I notice "Papuan languages" frequently have /ə/ and /ɨ/ phonemes (or similar, like /ɤ/ and /ɯ/) in addition to the basic five vowels (or however many peripheral vowels there are). There is a phenomenon of linguists treating [ɨ] as an epenthetic consonant rather than a full vowel in languages of this region, though. I imagine it probably has something to do with the "high vowel deletion" that I heard some paper mention.
awesomely done
please continue to dive into the papuan languages..
I love this channel
Wow, that is extremely interesting.
Comment this way of telling stories with setting up a subject and then talking around it. I found that also in China, in Shanghai.
The legend of language TH-cam is back.