Biak ( or 'Biak language'; or 'our language'; Indonesian: ), also known as Biak-Numfor, Noefoor, Mafoor, Mefoor, Nufoor, Mafoorsch, Myfoorsch and Noefoorsch, is an Austronesian language of the South Halmahera-West New Guinea subgroup of the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages.
According to Ethnologue, it is spoken by about 70,000 people in Biak and Numfor and numerous small islands in the Schouten Islands, located in Papua province of Western New Guinea, northeastern Indonesia.
Dialects
There are a number of different dialects of Biak spoken on various different islands, the most well-known being Biak-Numfoor, spoken on the island of Numfoor. These dialect differences are minor and mostly limited to slight regular sound changes. The vast majority of Biak speakers are also fluent in the local variety of Malay, but not all of them are proficient in standard Indonesian.
Geographical distributions of Biak dialects within Raja Ampat Regency (Ronsumbre 2020):
Betew dialect
Waigeo Selatan District: Saonek, Saporkren, Yenbeser, Yenwaupur, Sawinggrai, Kapisawar, and Arborek villages. Waigeo Barat District: Mutus, Biantsyi, Waisilip, Manyaifun, Meos Manggara, and Pam villages. Kofiau District: Deer, Balal, and Tolobi villages. Misool District: Pulau Tikus, Solol, Meos Kapal, and Umkabu villages. Samate District: Jefman village. Teluk Manyalibit District: Mumes village.
Kafdaron dialect
Samate District: Yensawai, Amdui, Yenanas, and Aresi villages
Karon dialect
Sausapor District: Sausapor village
Bikar (Biak Karon) District, Tambrauw Regency
Usba dialect
Waigeo Utara District: Rauki village. Ayau District: Dorekar and Meosbekwan villages.
Wardo dialect
Waigeo Timur District: Yensner, Urbinasopen, Yembekaki, and Puper villages. Waigeo Utara District: Menir, Warwanai, Boni, Asukweri, and Kabare villages. Ayau District: Rutung, Reni, and Yenkawir villages.
Sociolinguistic situation
Despite the comparatively high number of speakers compared to some other Austronesian languages, Biak is still in danger of extinction. Within the main towns, the generation of speakers aged between 20 and 50 have only passive knowledge of the language and rarely use the language actively, instead preferring to use Malay. Younger generations do not even generally have passive knowledge of the language. Biak is only actively used as a spoken language by members of the community over 50 years of age or so and even they regularly code switch into Malay. However, within the villages further from town there are still children who are fluent in Biak. Songs in Biak are also very popular throughout the islands.
There is a strong initiative to promote the use of the Biak language, with translations of various books and teaching manuals as well as a radio station and a number of church services throughout the year being conducted solely in Biak. Since 2002, there has also been an initiative to introduce Biak being taught formerly in schools on the islands.
Phonology
Biak has a phoneme inventory consisting of 13 consonants and 5 vowels, in which vowel length is phonemic. In the orthography long vowels are written with an acute accent. The phoneme is very infrequent in its use and some older speakers still realise it as in loanwords.
The vowel is the only rounded vowel in Biak; the other four are unrounded.
Morphology
Pronouns and person markers
In Biak pronouns and articles are morphologically related, with both situating a given participant by indicating their relative discourse or spatial (e.g. directional or motional) status. This is not uncommon for Austronesian Languages. Pronouns in Biak are marked for number and clusivity.
Free personal pronouns in Biak share their main distributional properties with nouns; however, they are somewhat more restricted. They can be used as a complement of a predicate or preposition but they cannot be used as subjects. In the example below, the use of the first-person personal pronoun can be seen to complement a verb, while the second example shows how a free personal pronoun, in this clause third-person , cannot be used as a subject:
Pronominal affixes
In Biak, pronominal affixes can combine with verbs in three possible inflection patterns (given in the table below), which are partly phonologically conditioned.
Due to the person marking nature of these affixes, the need for the presence of a core noun phrase in the same clause is negated. Thus the following sentence is still grammatical without NP Rusa nanine, as the verb has a pronominal affix that gives the same information.