Nias language

Nias
Li Niha
Spoken in	Indonesia
Region	Nias and Batu Islands, North Sumatra
Native speakers	770,000  (date missing)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian Northwest Sumatran ? Northern Barrier Islands ? Nias
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-2	nia
ISO 639-3	nia
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The Nias language is an Austronesian language spoken on Nias Island and the Batu Islands off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. It belongs to the Northwest Sumatran subgroup which also includes Mentawai and the Batak languages.^[1] It had about 770,000 speakers in 2000.^[1] There are three main dialects: northern, central and southern.^[2]

Grammar

The basic word order in Nias is verb–object–subject, a characteristic shared with Malagasy and the Batak languages. There are no adjectives in Nias, instead verbs are used in their place.^[3]

Nias shows consonant mutation at the beginning of nouns and some other classes of words to show grammatical case. Several consonants are subject to mutation as shown in the table below. Where a word begins in a vowel, either n or g is added before the vowel.^[3]

Initial mutations

Base form	Mutated form
f	v
t	d
s	z
c
k	g
b	mb
d	ndr
vowel	n + vowel g + vowel

Phonology

The southern dialect of Nias has the following phonemes:^[3]

Vowels

	Front	Сentral	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	⟨ö⟩ ɤ	o
Open		a

Consonants

	Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Palato- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n
Stop	b	t d ⟨ndr⟩ [dʳ]	⟨c⟩ [tʃ] ⟨z⟩ [dʒ]		k ɡ	⟨'⟩ [ʔ]
Fricative	ɸ β	s			⟨kh⟩ [x]	h
Approximant	⟨ß⟩ [ʋ]	l		⟨y⟩ [j]	w
Trills	⟨mb⟩ [ʙ]	r

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
2. ^ Brown, Lea (1997) Nominal Mutation in Nias. In: Odé, Cecilia & Wim Stokhof (1997) Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Rodopi, Amsterdam. ISBN9042002530.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Brown, Lea (2005) Nias. In: Adelaar, Alexander & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds.) (2005) The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar, Routledge, Abingdon. ISBN0700712860.

External links

• Time for Nias Language to Enrich National Language An update for Nias Dictionary
• Nias wordlist, Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database
• Brown, Lea (2001): Grammar of Nias Selatan. PhD Thesis, University of Sidney. (PDF download available.)
• Online dictionary of Nias
• Kamus Nias-Indonesia (Nias-Indonesian Dictionary)
• Articles on Nias Language (in Indonesian)