Yahadian is a Papuan language of the Bird's Head Peninsula of Southwest Papua. It is spoken in Yahadian village, Kais District, South Sorong Regency. Overall, Yahadian is poorly documented, with only enough data for a sketch of the language's structure. It is considered "endangered" by Ethnologue.
Geographic distribution Yahadian is a member of the Trans–New Guinea languages, spoken on the northwestern corner of the island of New Guinea. Three villages speak Yahadian: Mugim, Yahadian, and (parts of) Kais, with an estimated 1,200 speakers in 2002. They are all located on the south side of the Bird's Head peninsula in Indonesia.
Yahadian is most closely related to Konda; the two languages appear to form a dialect continuum. Yahadian speakers in the village of Mugim reported that they could "easily" understand Konda speakers. They are also the only two South Bird's Head languages that do not mark gender on nouns.
It does not appear to have a close relationship with its eastern neighbor, the Inanwatan language, with limited lexical overlap (8%) and far different phonology and morphology.
Phonology
Consonants Yahadian has 21 consonants, according to de Vries's analysis.
+Yahadian consonants Bilabial Alveolar Palato-alveolar Palatal Velar Labiovelar Glottal Plosive Fricative Nasal Tap/Trill Approximant
Vowels Yahadian has eight vowels:
+Yahadian vowels Front CentralBack unrounded unrounded rounded Close Close-mid Open-mid Open
Phonotactics The language generally uses CV or V syllables, with a few exceptions. CC consonant clusters require one of the consonants to be [r] or [t]. Nasals and liquids are the only observed word-final consonants.
Morphology Yahadian has fairly simple morphology compared to its neighbors. It does not index the verb's arguments via affixes, unlike other South Bird's Head languages.
Pronouns Gender is not known to be marked in Yahadian. De Vries reports the following pronouns for Yahadian:
singular plural 1st person né(nigi) ná(gigi) 2nd person é(rigi) ádigi/adʒigi 3rd person mí(gigi) míginaigi
Notes
References
External links Paradisec has an open access collection from Bert Voorhoeve that includes Yahadian language materials