Biatah language

Biatah
Native to	Malaysia
Region	Borneo
Ethnicity	Bidayuh
Native speakers	72,000 (2000)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Land Dayak Bidayuh Biatah–Tringgus Biatah
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bth
Glottolog	biat1246

The Biatah language is spoken in the Malaysian state of Sarawak and the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan. It belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	(t͡ʃ)	k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	g
Fricative			s			h
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Trill			r
Approximant		w	(l)	j

• [t͡ʃ] and [l] are heard in other dialects.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a	ɔ

• /i, u, e, o/ can have allophones of [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔ].^[2][3]

References

1. Biatah at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Darmansyah, Durdje Durasid; Sari, Nirmala (1994). Morfologi dan sintaksis bahasa Bedayuh. Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan.
3. Topping (1993)

• Topping, Donald M. A Dialect Survey of the Land Dayaks of Sarawak, Language and Oral Traditions in Borneo. 1993. Selected Papers from the First Extraordinary Conference of The Borneo Research Council, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, August 4-9, 1990, pp. 247-274