Duriankere

Duriankari (or Duriankere) is an extinct Papuan language (or dialect) of Indonesian Papua. It is associated with the Duriankari people of the eponymous village situated at the southern tip of the island of Salawati, which is part of the Raja Ampat Archipelago and is adjacent to the Bird's Head Peninsula of the West Papuan mainland.

It was observed in the 1950s that its speakers were shifting to the Moi language. Duriankari was reported in the 1980s to have had about 100 speakers, but in 1994, it was said by the nearby Inanwatan people to be extinct. It was listed as a separate language by Voorhoeve (1975a, p. 440), but Berry & Berry (1987, p. 92) conclude that not enough is known about it to determine whether it is a separate language or a dialect of Inanwatan. The Inanwatan language is spoken in a few villages over 150 kilometres to the east (as well as by a smaller community across the Sele Strait from Duriankari in the village of Seget). The Inanwatan people there regard the Duriankari people as descendants of Inanwatans who were carried away so far west by a mythical flood.

A list of words in the language collected by J.C. Anceaux is available in Voorhoeve (1975b, p. 104) and Smits & Voorhoeve (1998).

From Wikipedia · Duriankari language · CC BY-SA 4.0