Tobelo language

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For the town in North Halmahera, Indonesia, see Tobelo.

Tobelo
Spoken in:	North Halmahera, Indonesia
Total speakers:	27,720 (2000)
Language family:	Papuan West Papuan North Halmahera Northeast Halmahera Tobelo
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`—`
ISO 639-3:	`tlb`

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Tobelo (Indonesian: Bahasa Tobelo) is a West Papuan language spoken on on the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera and on parts of several neighboring islands. The Tobelo-speaking heartland is in the district (Indonesian kecematan) of Tobelo, located on the western shore of Kao Bay. The district capital, also known as Tobelo, serves as a regional commercial and administrative center and is the largest settlement on Halmahera.

Sign in Tobelo language posted in Tobelo village

[edit] Dialects

Six principal dialects are generally recognized (Voorhoeve 1988):

Heleworuru
Boeng
Dodinga
Lake Paca
Kukumutuk
Popon

The Tugutil or "Forest Tobelo" may constitute an additional dialectal variant, but this has not been satisfactorily documented.

In addition, based on cognition percentages in a basic vocabulary list, Voorhoeve 1988 identifies five other North Halmaheran language varieties as dialects of the putative Northeast Halmaheran language. Together with Tobelo, these varieties are Galela, Loloda, Modole, Pagu and Tabaru. Most speakers consider these to be distinct languages from Tobelo, although they do acknowledge a certain degree of mutual intelligibility.

[edit] Directionals

Most all of the 50 languages of Maluku have some sort of directional system. At the least the up/down distinction seems to be an areal feature. But this brings up the chicken and the egg phenomenon. Is this directional system of AN or NAN origin? Or is it a mixture? Perhaps it is not a coincidene that the Tobelo are the most widespread ethnic group in Maluku, with sizable emigrant population throughout the province. We can a least be sure that the Malay directionals are the "egg", because Malay as spoken in Western Indonesia does not use these directionals. Whereas Moluccan Malay uses direct calques of the Tobelo terms:

bawah, atas, darat, laut.

Tobelo directionals are described in Taylor (1984). Tobelo directional adverbs occur:

on motion verbs to specify direction of motion
on nouns to specify motion away from or toward an object

Thus, interpretation of directional adverbs is entirely context-dependent. For example

        o   tau    t-oiki
        NM  house  1AGT-go
        'I'm going to the house'

If I meet you landwards of the house, this means that I'm headed inland from my house. If I meet you seawards of the house, then it means I'm headed inland to the house.

Some Tobelo directionals
	Deictic	Adverb
land	dina	-iha
sea	dai	-oko
up	daku	-ilye
down	dau	-uku
over	doka	-ika

[edit] References

Holton, Gary. 2003. Tobelo. (Languages of the World/Materials 328). Munich: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3-89586-706-3
Hueting, Anton. 1908. Tobeloreesch-Hollandsch woordenboek met Hollandsch-Tobeloreesch inhoudsopgave. 's-Gravenhage: Nijhoff.
Hueting, Anton. 1908. O Tobelohoka manga totoade: verhalen en vertellingen in de Tobeloreesche taal. Bijdragen tot de Taal, Land en Volkenkunde 61.1-318.
Hueting, Anton. 1936. Iets over de spaakkunst van de Tobeloreesche taal. Bijdragen tot de Taal, Land en Volkenkunde 94.295-407.
Taylor, Paul Michael. 1984. Tobelorese deixis. Anthropological Linguistics 26.102-22.
Voorhoeve, C. L. 1988. The languages of the northern Halmaheran stock. Papers in New Guinea Linguistics, no. 26., 181-209. (Pacific Linguistics A-76). Canberra: Australian National University.