Region Papua New Guinea Native speakers 30% or less (2000) Glottolog mass1263 | Ethnicity 85 (2000) ISO 639-3 mvs | |
Language family unclassified (possible language isolate) |
Massep (Masep, Potafa, Wotaf) is a poorly documented Papuan language spoken by under 50 people in a single village. Despite the small number of speakers, however, language use is vigorous. Donohue and colleagues (2002) conclude that it is definitely not a Kwerba language, as it had been classified by Wurm (1975), and they did not notice connections to any other language family. Ethnologue and Glottolog list it as a language isolate, but it has not been included in wider surveys such as Ross (2005). The pronouns are not dissimilar from those Trans–New Guinea languages, but Massep is geographically distant from that family.
References
Massep language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA