Mai Brat language

The Mai Brat (Maybrat) is a Papuan language spoken by the Ayamaru and Karon Dori peoples of the Maybrat Regency on the Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea. Ayamaru dialect is spoken in the many villages around the Ayamaru Lakes. It is only distantly related to other languages, sharing 10% of its vocabulary with its nearest neighbors (apart from the very similar Karon Dori), though it may be part of the West Papuan family.

Variant spellings of the language include Majbrat, Mey Brat, and Brat. Other names include Atinjo and Maite.

Mai Brat is fairly isolating, with subject–verb–object and noun–adjective word order. It is a highly contextual language, tense of verbs being inferred from context alone.

External links

• Paradisec has an open access collection of Mai Brat language (CVL1)

References

Bibliography

• "Maybrat" in World Atlas of Language Structures
• Philomena Hedwig Dol. A grammar of Maybrat: a language of the Bird's Head Peninsula, Papua Province, Indonesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2007. ISBN 978-0-85883-573-3
• Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson. Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782.