Batuley (Gwatle lir) is a language spoken on the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. It is close to Mariri; Hughes (1987) estimates that around 80% of lexical items are shared. The language's name comes from the Gwatle island (Batuley in Indonesian), which the Batuley consider their homeland (Daigle (2015)).

Geographical distribution

Batuley is spoken in eastern Indonesia across seven villages that Daigle (2015) lists in his thesis. Some of them are Kabalsiang on Aduar Island, Kumul in the identically-named island, and Gwaria (Waria) in the Island of Gwari.

Phonology

Vowels

Batuley has a simple five-vowel system with no vowel length distinction (Daigle 2015).

• i
• e
• u
• o
• a

[ɪ] is an allophone of /i/ and /e/ (in different environments). [e] is an allophone of /a/ when it does not receive the primary stress. Furthermore, /e/ and /i/ may both be reduced to a schwa in fast speech in certain conditions.

Consonants

Daigle (2015)

Lexicon

Daigle (2015)

• gwayor: water, fresh water
• gwari: island
• keiran: sister; branch
• lef: big house
• kai: wood, tree
• ban: chest, breast
• fol gwayer: breast milk (fol: breast, gwayer: its water)
• kaom: scorpion
• gwarfagfag: small fresh-water turtle
• kudomsai: cloud
• ror: dance (n)
• fulan: month
• sapato, safato: shoe (borrowing)
• solar: diesel fuel (borrowing)
• nol: zero (borrowing)
• fikir: think (borrowing)
• fuis: cat (borrowing)
• guru: teacher (borrowing)
• kartas: paper (borrowing)
• kasar: crack, split (borrowing)
• kofi: hat (borrowing)
• tata: older sibling (borrowing)
• tempo: year (borrowing)
• buku: book (borrowing)

References

Further reading

• Daigle, Benjamin T. (2015). A grammar sketch of Batuley: An Austronesian language of Aru, eastern Indonesia (PDF) (M.A. thesis). LOT (Leiden University). hdl:1887/43444. Retrieved 11 May 2019.

This Austronesian languages-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e