Ethnicity Bunak ISO 639-3 bfn | Region central Timor Native speakers 76,000 (2010) | |
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Language family Trans–New Guinea (TNG)West TNG linkageWest Timor – Alor–Pantar ?Bunak | ||
The Bunak language (also known as Bunaq, Buna', Bunake) is the language of the Bunak people of the mountainous region of central Timor, split between the political boundary between West Timor, Indonesia, particularly in Lamaknen District and East Timor. It is one of the few on Timor which is not an Austronesian language, but rather a Papuan language like groups on New Guinea. It is usually classified in the Trans–New Guinea language family. The language is surrounded by Malayo-Polynesian languages, like the Atoni and the Tetum.
Pronouns seem to tie Bunak more closely to the Alor–Pantar languages, in a group Ross (2005) calls "West Timor", than with the Papuan East Timor languages. The independent pronouns and object prefixes, which appear to retain the proto-Trans–New Guinea dual suffix *-li, are as follows: