Maʼya language
Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia
title: "Maʼya language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["south-halmahera–west-new-guinea-languages", "languages-of-western-new-guinea", "tonal-languages-in-non-tonal-families"] description: "Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maʼya_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Maya |
| states | Indonesia |
| region | Raja Ampat Islands |
| pushpin_map | Southeast Asia |
| coordinates | |
| speakers | |
| date | 2000–2001 |
| ref | e18 |
| ethnicity | Ma'ya |
| familycolor | Austronesian |
| fam2 | Malayo-Polynesian |
| fam3 | Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian |
| fam4 | Eastern Malayo-Polynesian |
| fam5 | South Halmahera–West New Guinea |
| fam6 | Raja Ampat–South Halmahera |
| fam7 | Raja Ampat |
| fam8 | Nuclear Raja Ampat |
| fam9 | Ma'ya–Salawati |
| dia1 | Biga |
| dia2 | Ma'ya |
| dia3 | Kawe |
| dia4 | Legenyem |
| dia5 | Wauyai |
| lc1 | slz |
| lc2 | kgb |
| lc3 | lcc |
| lc4 | wuy |
| glotto | raja1258 |
| glottorefname | Raja Ampat Maya |
| ELP | 2283 |
| ELPname | Legenyem |
| map | Ma'ya language distribution map.png |
| :: |
|name=Maya |states=Indonesia |region = Raja Ampat Islands |pushpin_map = Southeast Asia |pushpin_map_caption = |coordinates = |speakers= |date=2000–2001 |ref=e18 |ethnicity=Ma'ya |familycolor=Austronesian |fam2=Malayo-Polynesian |fam3=Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian |fam4=Eastern Malayo-Polynesian |fam5=South Halmahera–West New Guinea |fam6=Raja Ampat–South Halmahera |fam7=Raja Ampat |fam8=Nuclear Raja Ampat |fam9=Ma'ya–Salawati |dia1 = Biga |dia2 = Ma'ya |dia3 = Kawe |dia4 = Legenyem |dia5 = Wauyai |lc1=slz |ld1=Ma'ya |lc2=kgb |ld2=Kawe |lc3=lcc |ld3=Legenyem |lc4=wuy |ld4=Wauyai |glotto=raja1258 |glottorefname=Raja Ampat Maya |ELP=2283 |ELPname=Legenyem |map= Ma'ya language distribution map.png
Maya is an Austronesian language of the Raja Ampat islands in Southwest Papua, Indonesia. It is part of the South Halmahera–West New Guinea (SHWNG) subgroup and is spoken by about 6,000 people in coastal villages on the islands of Batanta, Misool, Salawati, and Waigeo, on the boundary between Austronesian and Papuan languages.
Dialects
Maya has five dialects: three on the island of Waigeo (Legenyem, Wauyai, and Kawe), one on Salawati and part of Batanta, and one on Misool. The prestige dialect is the one on Salawati. The varieties spoken on Salawati and Misool are characterized by the occurrence of and in some words, where the Waigeo dialects (and other related SHWNG languages) have and respectively.
On Waigeo Island, the three dialects are
- The Kawe dialect in Selpele and Salyo villages in the northwest part of the island.
- The Laganyan (Legenyem) dialect is spoken in Araway, Beo, and Lopintol villages on the Mayalibit Bay coast.
- The Wauyai (Wawiyai) dialect is spoken in Wawiyai village on the Kabui Bay coast.
In Glottolog 5.2 (2025), the Ma'ya dialects are classified as follows:
- Misool-Salawati Ma'ya
- Banlol
- Batanta Ma'ya
- Nuclear Ma'ya
- Waigeo Maya
- Biga
- Kawe
- Legenyem
- Wauyai
Phonology
Consonants
::data[format=table]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | Plosive | voiceless | voiced | Nasal | Fricative | Tap | Lateral | Approximant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| () | ||||||||||||
| () | ||||||||||||
| :: |
- Twelve consonants may also be heard as palatalized ; ; .
- When in word-final position, six plosives can occur as unreleased , as well as nasals .
- can be heard as retroflex in word-final positions, and when preceded by a back vowel.
- can be pronounced as when between two vowel sounds.
- can also be heard as a trill , when in word-final positions.
- can be heard as a velar , when preceding velar stops. may also be a loan phoneme.
- The glottal stop is heard mostly phonetically, in word-initial position before initial vowels.
- Other sounds may also occur as a result of Arabic and Indonesian loanwords.
Vowels
::data[format=table]
| Front | Central | Back | Close | Mid | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
::data[format=table]
| Phoneme | Allophones |
|---|---|
| , , | |
| , | |
| , , | |
| :: |
- Other sounds are considered archiphonemes, and can also phonetically occur as a result of within vowel clusters.
Tone
In Maya both tone and stress are lexically distinctive.{{Cite journal |last=Rivera-Castillo |first=Yolanda |last2=Pickering |first2=Lucy |year=2004 |title=Phonetic Correlates of Stress and Tone in a Mixed System |url=http://google.com/scholar?q=cache:TOq4DwMlWOkJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=2000&as_vis=1 |journal=Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=261–284 |citeseerx=10.1.1.538.9834 |doi=10.1075/jpcl.19.2.02riv}} This means both the stress and the pitch of a word may affect its meaning. The stress and tone are quite independent from one another, in contrast to their occurrence in Swedish and Serbo-Croatian. The language has three tonemes (high, rising and falling). Out of over a thousand Austronesian languages, there are only a dozen with lexical tone; in this case it appears to be a remnant of shift from Papuan languages.
Lexical tone is found only in final syllables.
References
References
- Remijsen, Bert. (November 2003). "New Perspectives in Word-Prosodic Typology". IIAS Newsletter #32.
- Arnold, Laura. (2018). "Contact and substrate in the languages of Wallacea, Part 2".
- (2001). "Dialectal Variation in the Lexical Tone System of Ma'ya". Language and Speech.
- Arnold, Laura Melissa. (2018). "Grammar of Ambel, an Austronesian language of Raja Ampat, west New Guinea".
- {{Glottolog. maya1289. Ma'ya–Salawati
- van der Leeden, Alex C.. (1993). "Ma{{hamza}}ya: a language study". Seri Terbitan LIPI-RUL Jakarta: Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia and Rijkuniversiteit te Leiden..
- Arnold, Laura. 2018. ‘[http://hdl.handle.net/10108/92289 A preliminary archaeology of tone in Raja Ampat]’. In Antoinette Schapper, ed. ''Contact and substrate in the languages of Wallacea'', Part 2. NUSA 64: 7–37. {{doi. 10.5281/zenodo.1450778
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