West Damar language

West Damar
West Damar
North Damar
Damar Batumerah
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Maluku Islands
Native speakers	(800 cited 1987)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central–Eastern Babar West Damar; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	drn
Glottolog	west2548

West Damar, or North Damar, is an Austronesian language of Damar Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. In spite of rather low cognacy rates with its neighboring languages,^[2] it can be classified as part of the Babar languages based on qualitative evidence.^[3]

It is spoken in two villages (Batumerah, Kuai) located in the north-western part of Damar.^[4]

Phonology

The consonant inventory of West Damar is as follows:^[5]

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive/Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	k
Plosive/Affricate	voiced	(b)	d		(ɡ)
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative			s		x	h
Trill			r
Lateral			l
Approximant		w		j

Sounds /b ɡ/ only occur in loanwords from Indonesian. /ŋ/ also mostly, but not exclusively, appears in loanwords.

The vowel inventory of West Damar is simply /a e i o u/.

Morphology

A few aspects of West Damar morphology are noted as follows.^[5]

Verb conjugation

Verbs in West Damar are conjugated according to person and number.

West Damar verbal prefixes
Person/number	Prefix	Verb -oni "to eat"	Other attested verbs
1st sg.	w-	woni
2nd sg.	m-	moni
3rd sg.	n- ^{[* 1]}	yoni	n-poko "explodes", n-woludlo "hunts", n-hakro "boils", n-dekro "is dry", ng-kerso "is thin",
1st pl. inclusive	k-, t-	toni	k-la "we go", k-wadano "we hear", k-hoto "we talk", k-mattuni "we sleep", k-nehi "we run"
1st pl. exclusive	m-	moni
2nd pl.	m- -y-,^{[* 2]} ms-	msoni	mlyo "you go", mnyedi "you fall"
3rd pl.	r-	roni

^ Becomes ng- before velar consonants.
^ The -y- is attached after the initial consonant of a verb stem, so from -lo "go" is born mlyo.

Possession

West Damar has a series of possessive suffixes that are attached to nouns. There is no possessive verb. The possessive suffixes are as follows:

West Damar possessive suffixes
Person/number	Suffix
1st sg.	-cheni
2nd sg.	-mcheni
3rd sg.	-eni
1st pl. inclusive	-toni
1st pl. exclusive	-moni
2nd pl.	-mseni
3rd pl.	-roni

The possessive suffixes are built from a base suffix -ni that also appears as a lexical derivational suffix:

ulcho + -ni > ulchuni "husband"
deweya + -ni > deweyeni "wife"
ullo "month" + -ni > ulloni "moon"

Negation

The word for "no" in West Damar is kewe. When split into a circumfix, ke- -we serves as a simple negator for content words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The -we part of the negator comes immediately after the stem it attaches to, but before other clitics. A few examples of negation provided by Chlenova are as follows:

ke-mormorsa-we

NEG-buffalo-NEG

"not a buffalo"

Piter

Peter

ke-tucha-we-mo

NEG-old-NEG-?

odo-i

1SG-DET

"Peter (is) not as old as I (am)"

Another negative predicative word krawui "unavailable" is also recorded.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary list:^[4]

West Damar	Indonesian	English
odo	saya	I
ede	engkau	you (sing.)
idi	dia	he, she
itito	kita	we (incl.)
odomo	kami	we (exc.)
edmi	kamu	you (pl.)
idiro	mereka	they
mehno	satu	one
wyeru	dua	two
wyetteli	tiga	three
wyoto	empat	four
wilimo	lima	five
wyenamo	enam	six
witi	tujuh	seven
way	delapan	eight
wisi	sembilan	nine
uswuti	sepuluh	ten
ulkona	kepala	head
lima	tangan	hand
eya	kaki	foot

Sample sentences

Ede mpondai? - Are you ill?

E’e, odo ulkonacheni nchepondo. - Yes, I have a headache.

Wohleyo Binayani idihe hulchupondeheti wohleyo Ahehendini - The mountain Binaya is the highest at the Seram island.

References

^ West Damar at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Mark Taber. 1993. Toward a better understanding of the Indigenous Languages of Southwestern Maluku. Oceanic Linguistics 32. 389-441.
^ Aone van Engelenhoven. 2010. Tentatively locating West-Damar among the languages of Southwest Maluku. In Chlenova, Svetlana and Fedorchuk, Artem (eds.), Studia Anthropologica: a Festschrift in Honor of Michael Chlenov, 297-326. Moscow-Jerusalem: Gesharim.
^ ^a ^b "West Damar Language or Damar-Batumerah, an Isolate in South-Eastern Indonesia" (PDF). 2015-05-12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-05-12. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
^ ^a ^b Chlenova, Svetlana (2008). "Preliminary Grammatical Notes on Damar Batumerah or West Damar, a Language of Southwest Maluku". In Yury Lander; Alexander Ogloblin (eds.). Language and Text in the Austronesian World: Studies in honor of Ülo Sirk. München: Lincom. pp. 163–177.