Kalam languages
Language family of Papua New Guinea
title: "Kalam languages" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["kalam-languages", "languages-of-papua-new-guinea", "west-madang-languages"] description: "Language family of Papua New Guinea" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_languages" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Language family of Papua New Guinea ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language family"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Kalam |
| altname | Kaironk River |
| region | Papua New Guinea |
| familycolor | Papuan |
| fam1 | Northeast New Guinea? |
| fam2 | Madang |
| glotto | kala1404 |
| glottorefname | Kalam–Kobon |
| :: |
|name=Kalam |altname=Kaironk River |region=Papua New Guinea |familycolor=Papuan |fam1=Northeast New Guinea? |fam2=Madang |glotto=kala1404 |glottorefname=Kalam–Kobon
The Kalam languages are a small family of languages in the Madang subgroup of Papua New Guinea. The languages that make up the family are Kalam, Tai, and Kobon.
They are famous for having perhaps the smallest numbers of lexical verbs of any languages in the world, with somewhere in the range of 100 to 120 verbs in the case of Kobon.
It is as yet unclear whether the Gants language is most closely related to the Kalam languages or is one of the Sogeram languages.
References
Further notes
References
- Winslow, John H.. (1977). "The Melanesian Environment". Australian National University Press.
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