Waskia language

Waskia
RegionPapua New Guinea
Native speakers
20,000 (2007)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3wsk
Glottologwask1241

Waskia (Vaskia, Woskia) is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea.[2] It is spoken on half of Karkar Island, and a small part of the shore on the mainland, by 20,000 people; language use is vigorous. The Waskia share their island with speakers of Takia, an Oceanic language which has been restructured under the influence of Waskia, which is the inter-community language. Waskia has been documented extensively by Malcolm Ross and is being further researched by Andrew Pick.

Waskia is spoken in Tokain (4°42′56″S 145°38′02″E / 4.715575°S 145.633995°E / -4.715575; 145.633995 (Tokain)), a village in Malas ward, Sumgilbar Rural LLG on the coast of mainland New Guinea, and on Karkar Island, with the island and mainland varieties being lexically divergent from each other.[3][4]

  1. ^ Waskia 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. ^ United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
  4. ^ Pick, Andrew (2019). "Gildipasi language project: tumbuna stories and tumbuna knowledge". Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS, University of London.