Native speakers 3,000 (2001) Glottolog bant1286 | ISO 639-3 bnq | |
Language family AustronesianMalayo-PolynesianPhilippineSangiricSouthBantik | ||
Bantik is an endangered Austronesian language, perhaps a Philippine language, of North Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is the traditional language of the Bantik people, who are now switching to Manado Malay (the local variety of Indonesian) as their language for everyday communication, though Bantik is still used as a marker of ethnic identity.
Contents
Bantik is regarded as a men's language, used by men in private, and it is considered improper to speak to women in Bantik. Very few women under the age of 30 know how to speak it.
Morphology
Bantik is agglutinative.
Syntax
The basic sentence orders of Bantik are subject–verb–object and verb–object–subject. The former is used when introducing a new object, the latter when introducing a new subject.
References
Bantik language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA