Tami language

Not to be confused with Tami languages or Tamil language.

Tami
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Morobe Province
Native speakers	2,100 (2010)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Oceanic North New Guinea Ngero–Vitiaz Vitiaz Tami
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tmy
Glottolog	tami1290

Tami is an Austronesian language on the Tami Islands and in a few villages at the tip of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It is not closely related to the other Huon Gulf languages, but like other North New Guinea languages in Morobe Province, its basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO).

Phonology

Tami distinguishes five vowels (i, e, a, o, u) and the following consonants (Colich 1995). Voiced obstruents do not occur in syllable-final position, while glottal stop only occurs at the end of a syllable.

	Bilabial	Labiovelar	Dental	Alveopalatal	Velar	Glottal
Voiceless	p	pw	t		k	-c [ʔ]
Voiced	b	bw	d	j [d͡ʒ]	g
Prenasalized	mb	mbw	nd	nj	ŋg
Nasal	m	mw	n		ŋ
Fricative	v [β]		s
Liquid			l
Approximant	w			y

Numerals

Traditional Tami counting practices begin with the fingers of the hands, then continue on the feet to reach twenty, which translates as 'whole person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'whole person'. Nowadays, most counting above five is done in Tok Pisin. An alternate form of the numeral 'one', dan, functions as an indefinite article. Distributive numerals are formed via reduplication: lualu 'two by two', tolatol 'three by three' and so forth (Bamler 1900:204).

Numeral	Term	Gloss
1	te	'one'
2	lu	'two'
3	tol	'three'
4	pat	'four'
5	lim	'five, hand'
6	lim ma te	'hand and one'
7	lima ma lu	'hand and two'
8	lima ma tol	'hand and three'
9	lim ma pat	'hand and four'
10	limantalu	'hands both'
20	damo monte	'person whole'

References

• Bamler, G. (1900). Bemerkungen zur Grammatik der Tamisprache. Vokabular der Tamisprache. Zeitschrift für afrikanische und ozeanische Sprachen 5: 198–253.
• Colich, Kim (1995). Tami organized phonology data. Ukarumpa: SIL.

External links

• Paradisec has two collections of Arthur Cappell's materials (AC1, AC2) and one collection of Malcolm Ross's (MR1) that include Sobei language materials.