| Yimas | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | Yimas village, Karawari Rural LLG, East Sepik Province |
Native speakers | 50 (2016)[1] |
Ramu–Lower Sepik
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | yee |
| Glottolog | yima1243 |
| ELP | Yimas |
 Yimas is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
| Coordinates: 4°40′50″S 143°32′56″E / 4.680562°S 143.548847°E | |
The Yimas language is spoken by the Yimas people, who populate the Sepik River Basin region of Papua New Guinea.[1] It is spoken primarily in Yimas village (4°40′50″S 143°32′56″E / 4.680562°S 143.548847°E), Karawari Rural LLG, East Sepik Province.[2] It is a member of the Lower-Sepik language family.[3]: 1 All 250-300 speakers of Yimas live in two villages along the lower reaches of the Arafundi River, which stems from a tributary of the Sepik River known as the Karawari River.[1][3]: 7
Yimas is a polysynthetic language with (somewhat) free word order, and is an ergative-absolutive language morphologically but not syntactically, although it has several other case-like relations encoded on its verbs. It has ten main noun classes (genders), and a unique number system. Four of the noun classes are semantically determined (male humans, female humans, higher animals, plants and plantmaterial) whereas the rest are assigned on phonological bases.[3]: 119
It is an endangered language, being widely replaced by Tok Pisin, and to a lesser extent, English. It is unclear if any children are native Yimas speakers. However, a Yimas pidgin was once used as a contact language with speakers of Alamblak and Arafundi.[citation needed] Although it is still used in face-to-face conversation, it is considered a threatened language on the Ethnologue endangerment scale, with a rating of 6b.[1][3]: 4–5
| Yimas Pidgin | |
|---|---|
Native speakers | None |
Yimas-based pidgin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | yima1235 Yimas-Alamblak-Pidginyima1244 Yimas-Arafundi-Pidginyima1246 Yimas-Iatmul Pidginyima1245 Yimas-Karawari Pidgin |
- ^ a b c d Yimas at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
- ^ a b c d Foley, William A. (1991). The Yimas Language of New Guinea. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804715829.
