Yali language

Yali
Yalimo
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Highland Papua
Ethnicity	Yali
Native speakers	(30,000 cited 1988–1999)[1]
Language family	Trans–New Guinea West Trans–New Guinea Irian Highlands ? Dani languages Ngalik Yali
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: yli – Anggurk Yali nlk – Ninia Yali yac – Pass Valley Yali
Glottolog	yali1257

Yali (Yaly, Jalè, Jaly) is a Papuan language of Indonesian New Guinea. The Yali people live east of the Baliem Valley, in the Western Highlands.

Dialectical differentiation is great enough that Ethnologue assigns separate codes to three varieties:

• Pass Valley, also known as Abenaho, North Ngalik, and Western Yali; subdialects are Pass Valley, Landikma, Apahapsili.
• Ninia, also known as North Ngalik and Southern Yali (Yali Selatan).
• Angguruk, also known as Northern Yali.

However, almost nothing is known of this language. Not even the pronouns were attested for Ross (2005) to base a classification on.

Siegfried Zoellner, a German missionary, has between 1960 and 1973 translated the bible into the Yali language.

Phonology

The phonology of the Yali language:^[2]

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	plain	b	d		k ɡ
	prenasal	ᵐb	ⁿd		ᵑɡ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ
	implosive		ɗ
Fricative		f	s			h
Lateral			l
Semivowel		w		j

A /ɡ/ sound at the end of words is pronounced /ʁ/.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Basic words and phrases

The following is a list of basic words and phrases in the Yali language:

• howam fano wellahen - how are you
• waa waa - thank you
• ninim ar - you're welcome
• nomin - friend
• fano - good
• ari - that
• du - this
• eke - and
• nune - speak/talk
• inune - language
• nare - man
• nowam - my news/state
• howam - your (sg.) news/state
• wellahi - for myself
• wellahen - for yourself
• wallahen - for him/herself
• wallahi - for ourselves
• wellahep - for yourselves/themselves
• fam - *end of statement particle
• an nahien - I am pleased
• an ari nindi - I like that
• an den angge - I have
• ar an nomin - S/he is my friend
• an nomini - They are my friends
• ar nomin fano - S/he is a good friend
• ir an nomini Amerikoan - My friends are from America
• an nune Yali inune fam - I speak Yali

Pronouns

These are the personal pronouns of the Yali language:

Free pronouns

	Singular	Plural
1st person	an	nir
2nd person	har	hir
3rd person	ar	ir

References

1. Anggurk Yali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Ninia Yali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Pass Valley Yali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Fahner, Christiaan (1979). The Morphology of Yali and Dani: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis.

• Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson (eds.). Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. doi:10.15144/PL-572. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782.

• Zöllner, Siegfried; Zöllner, Ilse (2017). Riesberg, Sonja (ed.). A Yali (Angguruk) – German Dictionary / Wörterbuch Yali (Angguruk) – Deutsch. A-PL 37. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics. hdl:1885/127381. ISBN 978-1-922185-39-6.

External links

• Yali (Apahapsili) DoReCo corpus compiled by Sonja Riesberg. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.