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Nen

Nen is a Yam language spoken in Papua New Guinea. Glottolog rates it shifting.

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Nen · 8.6°S 142.0°E

Nen (Nen Zi, Nenium, Wekamara) is a Yam language spoken in the Bimadbn village in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, with 250 speakers as of a 2002 SIL survey. It is situated between the speech communities of Nambu and Idi.

Nen has unusual lexicalization patterns in its verbs. It has very few intransitive verbs, and where some verbs would be intransitive in most other languages, Nen has a class of morphologically "middle" verbs in their place. Many of the few intransitive verbs that Nen does have are positional verbs, which refer to spatial positions and postures.

From Wikipedia · Nen language (Papuan) · CC BY-SA 4.0

Words in Nen

MeaningWordRomanization
personEr*
namey3tkp3n*
eyeskop*
eartNgan*
nosememben*
toothsn*
tonguebnNge*
handtnd*
bloodsi*
bonegot*
skingane*
kneebut3m*
breastnono*
liverenzom*
waternu*
firebnz*
sunkeser*
starknd*
stonegb3nzErkp*
mountaingurgur*
treew3n*
leafsan*
nightsermb*
dogzEn*
fishwagib*
louseyadma*
oneEmbs*
twosombes*
Iynd*
youbm*

* in the simplified ASJP transcription

Most similar languages

Vocabulary

Grammar

Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.

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Glottolog · nenn1238 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · nqn