Bantik language

Bantik
Native to Indonesia
Region North Sulawesi
Native speakers
 3,000 (2001)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 bnq
Glottolog bant1286[2]

Bantik is an endangered Austronesian language, perhaps a Philippine language, of North Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is the traditional language of the Bantik people, who are now switching to Manado Malay (the local variety of Indonesian) as their language for everyday communication, though Bantik is still used as a marker of ethnic identity.

Bantik is regarded as a men's language, used by men in private, and it is considered improper to speak to women in Bantik. Very few women under the age of 30 know how to speak it.

Phonology

Vowels

Front Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a

Consonants

Bilabial Alveolar Velar Glottal
Stop Voiceless p t k ʔ
Voiced b d ɡ
Nasal m n ŋ
Fricative s h
Flap ɾ

Grammar

Morphology

Bantik is agglutinative.

Syntax

The basic sentence orders of Bantik are subject–verb–object and verb–object–subject. The former is used when introducing a new object, the latter when introducing a new subject.

References

  1. ↑ Bantik at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Bantik". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
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