Mambai (language)

Mambai
Spoken in	East Timor
speaker	195.778
Linguistic ; classification	Austronesian languages; Malayo-Polynesian languages; Central Malayo Polynesian; Timor-Flores; Timor; Ramelaic languages; Mambai;
Official status
Other official status in	East Timor ( national language )
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	-
ISO 639 -2	map
ISO 639-3	mgm

Mambai is a central Malayo-Polynesian language of the Timor branch . It is spoken by the East Timorese Mambai ethnic group . As one of the Ramelaic languages , it had a stronger influence from the Papuan and Ambonesian Malay languages . With 195,778 speakers, it is the second most common mother tongue in East Timor.

distribution

Tetum, Mambai and Portuguese


The largest language groups in the sucos of East Timors. and number of speakers of the various languages in the individual communities (as of 2015).

Proportion of Mambai native speakers in the sucos of East Timors.

The main centers of the Mambai are Ermera , Aileu , Remexio , Turiscai , Maubisse , Ainaro and Same . The majority of the Exile Timorese in Australia also speak Mambai as their mother tongue. Mambai is one of the 15 national languages of East Timor recognized in the constitution .

When the Portuguese made Dili the new capital of their Portuguese Timor colony in 1769 , Mambai was still spoken in the surrounding area. The result was that the Tetum Prasa there has strong influences from the Mambai.

Grammar and dialects

Due to the mountainous landscape, the language is split into many dialects (Damata, Lolei, Manua, Mambai) . The language has a very simple morphology . The vocabulary of the Papuan languages has been partly adopted, for example in the southern dialects (for example in Ainaro) from neighboring Bunak . The Creolization with Ambonesian Malay, which probably originated from Dili by traders in the 15th century, is almost complete. The southern dialects in particular have many words that have been shortened by syncope or apocope . The phenomenon is also a common feature with the bunak or its western neighbor, the uab meto . It is less pronounced in the northern dialects.

Comparison of the dialects of the Mambai of Ainaro and Aileu
number	Ainaro	Aileu
1	id	id
2	rua	ru
3	tel	devil
4th	pat	fat
5	lim	lim
6th	lim-nain-ide	nen
7th	lim-nai-rua	hitu
8th	lim-nai-tel	ualu
9	lim-nai-pata	sia
10	sagúl	sakúl

Web links

Geoffrey Hull , Celestino de Araújo, Benjamim de Araújo e Corte-Real : Mambai Language Manual. Ainaro dialect. Sebastião Aparício da Silva Project, 2001
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald , RMW Dixon : Grammars in contact. A cross-linguistic typology. Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-19-920783-6 (Chapter 6)
Helem Andressa de Oliveira Fogaça: Estudo fonético e fonológico do Mambae de Same. Uma língua de Timor-Leste . (PDF; 1.34 MB) Dissertation. Universidade de Brasília, Brasília 2013.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Results of the 2015 census Direcção-Geral de Estatística ; accessed on November 23, 2016.
↑ Results of the 2010 census of the individual sucos. ( Memento from January 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) East Timor's statistical office
^ ^A ^b ^c The Languages of East Timor: Some Basic Facts . ( Memento from January 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

[Cen2015-1] Results of the 2015 census Direcção-Geral de Estatística ; accessed on November 23, 2016.

[2] Results of the 2010 census of the individual sucos. ( Memento from January 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) East Timor's statistical office

[Basic-3] A ^b ^c The Languages of East Timor: Some Basic Facts . ( Memento from January 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )