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The East Bird's Head – Sentani languages form a family of Papuan languages proposed by Malcolm Ross which combines the East Bird's Head and Sentani families along with the Burmeso language isolate. Sentani had been a branch of Stephen Wurm's proposal for Trans–New Guinea. It has lexical similarities with the Asmat–Kamoro languages, but Ross does not believe these demonstrate a genealogical relationship.

East Bird's Head – Sentani
Geographic distribution	Papua
Linguistic classification	Extended West Papuan ? East Bird's Head – Sentani
Subdivisions	East Bird's Head Burmeso Sentani
Glottolog	None

Ross also included the unclassified language Tause, but as a stimulus for investigation rather than as a serious proposal.

The East Bird's Head – Sentani languages, together with the West Papuan languages and the Yawa isolate, form part of a tentative proposal for an Extended West Papuan family. They are distinguished from the West Papuan family in having forms like ba or wa for the second-person singular ("thou") pronoun.

Classification

East Bird's Head – Sentani unifies two groups that Wurm placed at the family level, and one or two isolates.

	East Bird's Head    Mantion (Manikion)     Meax: Meax (Meyah), Meninggo (Moskona)     ? Saponi       Burmeso (Taurap)     ? Tause (perhaps two languages, Tause and Weirate)    Sentani    Demta     Sentani proper: Sentani, Nafri, Tabla (Tanah Merah)

Tause is best considered unclassified. Clouse (1997) classified it as a Lakes Plain language, but its pronouns are not a good match. Ross included it here partially to spark further investigation. Saponi shares half of its basic lexical vocabulary with Rasawa, but its pronouns instead resemble those of East Bird's Head.

Pronouns

These families share no common vocabulary, and are linked only by their pronouns. The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-families are,

Sentani

	Number
Person	Singular	Plural
		exclusive	inclusive
1st	*də	*me	*e
2nd	*wa	?
3rd	*nə	?

East Bird's Head

	Number
Person	Singular	Plural
		exclusive	inclusive
1st	*da, *di-	*meme, *me-	*mimi, *mi-
2nd	*ba, *bi-	*ia, *i-
3rd	*e, *-	*rua, *ri-

Burmeso and Tause correspond in their first and second singular pronouns:

• Burmeso da (de-), ba (be-)
• Tause di, ba

Saponi corresponds in first person and second singular:

• Saponi mamire "I, we", ba "thou".

References

На других языках

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- [en] East Bird's Head – Sentani languages

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[es] Lenguas Doberai-Sentani

Las lenguas de Doberai-Sentani son una familia lingüística de lenguas papúes propuesta por Malcolm Ross que incluye a las lenguas de Doberai oriental y a las lenguas sentani así como al idioma burmeso, como rama aislada.

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[fr] Langues bird's head de l'Est-sentani

Les langues bird's head de l'Est-sentani sont une proposition de famille de langues papoues parlées en Indonésie, dans la péninsule de Doberai, située à l'extrémité occidentale de la Nouvelle-Guinée, dans la province de Papouasie.

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