| Also Known As: Siboma,Sipoma
Description:
Numbami (also known as Siboma or Sipoma) is an Austronesian language spoken by about 300 people with ties to a single village in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. Numbami is a phonologically conservative isolate within the Huon Gulf languages, and is the last Austronesian language on the south coast of the Huon Gulf. Its nearest relatives along the coast to the southeast are 270 km away, Maisin and Arifama-Miniafia in Oro Province (Northern Province in the former colony of Papua).
The word order typology of Numbami and the Huon Gulf languages is Subject Verb Object (SVO), which is typical of Austronesian languages; while that of Arifama-Miniafia and most of the Papuan Tip languages is Subject Object Verb (SOV), which is typical of Papuan languages. Maisin has been characterized as a mixed language, with both Austronesian and Papuan features that obscure its primary heritage, and it is likely (but unprovable) that settlements of Austronesian speakers along the 270 km of coast were gradually absorbed into inland communities speaking Papuan languages.
Numbami distinguishes 5 vowels and 18 consonants. Voiceless /s/ is a fricative, but its voiced and prenasalized equivalents are..... full article at Wikipedia |
