Pyu is a language isolate spoken in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. As of 2000, the language had about 100 speakers in Papua New Guinea. It is spoken in Biake No. 2 village () of Biake ward, Green River Rural LLG in Sandaun Province. Additionally, there are about 150 speakers in Batom District, Pegunungan Bintang Regency, Highland Papua, Indonesia.
Classification Timothy Usher links the Pyu language to its neighbors, the Left May languages and the Amto–Musan languages, in as Arai–Samaia stock.
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013) . found lexical similarities with Kimki. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.
Based on limited lexical evidence, Pyu had been linked to the putative Kwomtari–Fas family, but that family is apparently spurious and Foley (2018) notes that Pyu and Kwomtari are highly divergent from each other. Some similar pronouns are found in both Kwomtari and Pyu:
! pronoun !! Pyu !! Kwomtari |- | ‘1, we’ || məla || mena |- | ‘2, you (sg)’ || no || une |- | ‘3, he/she/it/they’ || na || nane
Vocabulary The following basic vocabulary words are from Conrad & Dye (1975) and Voorhoeve (1975),Voorhoeve, C.L. Languages of Irian Jaya: Checklist. Preliminary classification, language maps, wordlists. B-31, iv + 133 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1975. as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! gloss !! Pyu |- ! head | uǏiʔ; wiri |- ! hair | Ǐɩsiʔ; lisi |- ! ear | kweɛ |- ! eye | bəmeʔ; pɛmɛʔɛ |- ! nose | tɛpʌǏi |- ! tooth | rəne |- ! tongue | asaguʔ |- ! louse | ni; niʔ |- ! dog | naguʔ; nakwu |- ! pig | we; wɛʔ |- ! bird | maǏuǏiʔ; maru |- ! egg | Ǐio taʔ; taʔ |- ! blood | ɛmiʔ; kami |- ! bone | bəli; bɩǏiʔ |- ! skin | kagole; kʌkʌǏɛʔ |- ! breast | ib̶iʔ |- ! tree | ga; ka |- ! man | tali; taliʔ |- ! woman | Ǐomæʔ |- ! sun | agwiʔ |- ! water | ʔiʔ; yi |- ! fire | kamie; kʌmæ |- ! stone | siri; sɩliʔ |- ! road, path | ʔonæ; ʔonɛ |- ! eat | waŋgɛʔ |- ! one | tefiye; tɛᵽiɛʔ |- ! two | kasi
References
External links Pyu language word list at TransNewGuinea.org