South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages
| South Halmahera–West New Guinea | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | The southern part of the islands of North Maluku in the Halmahera Sea, and the regions bordering Cenderawasih Bay, in Indonesian Papua |
| Linguistic classification | Austronesian
|
| Proto-language | Proto-South Halmahera–West New Guinea (Proto-SHWNG) |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | sout3229 |
The South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages (red), with map names in French. The group at left is the Raja Ampat–South Halmahera languages; the one at right is the Cenderawasih Bay. (The black line is the Wallace Line.) | |
The South Halmahera–West New Guinea (SHWNG) languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, found in the islands and along the shores of the Halmahera Sea in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and of Cenderawasih Bay in the provinces of Papua and West Papua. There are 38 languages.
The unity of the South Halmahera–West New Guinea subgroup is well supported by lexical and phonological evidence. Blust (1978) has proposed that they are most closely related to the Oceanic languages, but this classification is not universally accepted.
Most of the languages are only known from short word lists, but Buli, Patani and Taba on Halmahera, Ambel on Raja Ampat, and Biak, Wamesa, Wooi, and Waropen in Cenderawasih Bay, are fairly well attested.