Native speakers 2,100 (2010) Glottolog tami1290 | ISO 639-3 tmy | |
Language family AustronesianMalayo-PolynesianOceanicWestern OceanicNorth New GuineaNgero–VitiazVitiazTami | ||
Tami is an Austronesian language on the Tami Islands and in a few villages at the tip of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It is not closely related to the other Huon Gulf languages, but like other North New Guinea languages in Morobe Province, its basic word order is SVO.
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Phonology
Tami distinguishes five vowels (i, e, a, o, u) and the following consonants (Colich 1995). Voiced obstruents do not occur in syllable-final position, while glottal stop only occurs at the end of a syllable.
Numerals
Traditional Tami counting practices begin with the fingers of the hands, then continue on the feet to reach '20', which translates as 'whole person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'whole person'. Nowadays, most counting above '5' is done in Tok Pisin. An alternate form of the numeral 'one', dan, functions as an indefinite article. Distributive numerals are formed via reduplication: lualu '2 by 2', tolatol '3 by 3' and so forth (Bamler 1900:204).