Berik language
Encyclopedia
Berik is a Papuan language spoken in eastern Papua
. Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor river towards the northern coast of Indonesia
n-controlled Irian Jaya. In 1994 it was estimated to have around 1200 speakers. It is regarded as one of the Tor–Kwerba languages.
US linguist John McWhorter
cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware". Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana (meaning "[he] gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight"), affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.
Sample
Papua
Papua was the name, as provided to the Portuguese commander Jorge de Meneses while sheltering there in 1526, of the people living on Waigeo, one of the Raja Ampat Islands west of the Vogelkop Peninsula, now part of the West Papua province of Indonesia. The Spanish pilot Martin de Uriarte in the...
. Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor river towards the northern coast of Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n-controlled Irian Jaya. In 1994 it was estimated to have around 1200 speakers. It is regarded as one of the Tor–Kwerba languages.
US linguist John McWhorter
John McWhorter
John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His linguistic specialty is creole and the process through which it forms.-Early life:...
cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware". Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana (meaning "[he] gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight"), affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.
Sample
- Angtaneʻ bosna Usafe je gatas tarnap ge nuin. Tesa ga belim taban, ga jes talebowel.
- "There was once a person named Usafe who lived near the sagoSagoSago is a starch extracted in the spongy center or pith, of various tropical palm stems, Metroxylon sagu. It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Moluccas, where it is called saksak and sagu. A type of flour, called sago flour, is made from sago. The largest supply...
acreages. Whenever he finished cutting down a sago tree, he pounded it"