Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia
Ambel (Amber), also known as Waigeo after the island where it is primarily spoken, is a heavily Papuan-influenced Austronesian language spoken on the island of Waigeo in the Raja Ampat archipelago near the northwestern tip of West Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken by approximately 1,600 people. It is endangered, as the population is shifting to Papuan Malay and few people born after the year 2000 have any knowledge of the language.
Dialects.
Ambel is spoken by approximately 1,600 people on Waigeo, an island in the Raja Ampat archipelago near the northwestern tip of West Papua, Indonesia. There are two dialects of Ambel:
Ambel speakers live alongside Biak speakers in the three villages of Warsamdin, Kabare, and Andey.
Distribution.
Ambel is spoken in the following locations within Raja Ampat Regency:
Phonology.
The sounds of the Ambel language are as follows:
// can be heard as [] or [] in free variation.
Proto-language.
Arnold (2018) reconstructs two tonemes for proto-Ambel, high /3/ and rising /12/, which is similar to the tonal system of Ma'ya.
Below are some monosyllabic proto-Ambel reconstructed lexical forms that have cognates with Matbat and Ma'ya. The Misool dialect is given for some Ma'ya forms; they are otherwise from the Salawati dialect.
Further reading.
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References.
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