Watiwa language

Watiwa
Dumpu
Native to Papua New Guinea
Region Madang Province
Native speakers
510 (2003)[1]
none
Language codes
ISO 639-3 wtf
Glottolog dump1243[2]

Watiwa is spoken by some 500 people living in six villages in Papua New Guinea. It is more commonly known as Dumpu, but this is the name of one of the six villages, and is not accepted as a name for the language. Surviving mostly as a secret language with which to talk amongst themselves when outsiders are present,[3] the majority of the speakers use Tok Pisin in daily life. Due to its increasingly rare use, it is estimated that this language will be extinct in a few decades.[3]

References

  1. Watiwa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Dumpu". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. 1 2 "PNG Language Resources endangered languages document" (PDF). SIL International. Retrieved 2009-05-13.


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