Maia language

Not to be confused with Maya language or Ma'ya language.
Maia
Pila
Saki
RegionMadang Province, Papua New Guinea
Native speakers
4,400 (2000 census)[1]
Trans–New Guinea?
Language codes
ISO 639-3sks
Glottologmaia1254

Maia is a Papuan language spoken in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea, and is a member of the Trans-New Guinea language family.[2][3] It has a language endangerment status of 6a, which means that it is a vigorous and sustainable language spoken by all generations. According to a 2000 census, there are approximately 4,500 living speakers of the language, who are split between twenty-two villages in the Almani district of the Bogia sub-district.[4]

There are variations in the Maia spoken between villages, but they can be generally categorized into two primary dialects. Of these two dialects, the Main Dialect accounts for approximately three-fourths of speakers and the Southern Dialect accounts for the remaining one-fourth. Variations of the Main Dialect tend to be predictable with only minor variations in pronunciation. The information presented in this article is based on the Wagedav dialect, a sub-dialect of the Main Dialect spoken in the Wagedav village.[3]

Other names for the language are Banar, Pila, Saki, Suaro, Turutap, and Yakiba.

  1. ^ Maia at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Pick, Andrew (2020). A reconstruction of Proto-Northern Adelbert phonology and lexicon (PDF) (PhD dissertation). University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
  3. ^ a b Hardin, Barbara (June 2002). Maia Grammar Essentials.
  4. ^ "Maia". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2019-04-19.