Puyuma
Language · official in 1 country
Puyuma falls outside reconstructions of Proto-Austronesian, a sign of how far it has diverged within the family. Also called Pinuyumayan, it is the language of the Puyuma, an indigenous people of Taiwan, and most of its speakers are older adults. Its villages trace their origins to two stories: born of the bamboo, or born of a stone.
The language on record
- Own name
- Pinuyumayan
- ISO 639-3
- PYU
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- Formosan
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Puyuma is official
Its single entry is Taiwan, which recognises Puyuma with the other indigenous languages while most of its speakers are older adults.
Official beside Puyuma
About Puyuma
Which villages speak Puyuma
The Puyuma cluster, 'born of the bamboo', takes in Puyuma itself, called Nanwang in Chinese, and Apapulu. The Katipul cluster, 'born of a stone', includes Alipai, Pinaski, Pankiu, Kasavakan, Katratripul, Likavung, Tamalakaw and Ulivelivek. Pinaski lies 2 km north of Nanwang and keeps close ties with it.
How Ting grouped the dialects
Ting in 1978 set Nanwang apart from a main branch that holds Pinaski and Ulivelivek, Rikavung, and Kasavakan with Katipul. Nanwang is conservative in its sounds, keeping the voiced plosives of proto-Puyuma, and innovative in its grammar: it uses one form for both oblique and genitive case.
What a Puyuma verb marks
The language has 18 consonants and 4 vowels, and sentences put the verb first. Verbs take four kinds of focus. Actor focus may be unmarked or take -em-, me- or ma-; object focus takes -aw, referent focus -ay, instrumental focus -anay. Aspect is perfect, imperfect or future, with reduplication doing much of the work. Articles separate a single person, i, from a single thing, a, and na covers any plural. One linguist, Teng, writes lr and l the other way round from the official orthography.
Common questions
Questions about Puyuma
Who still speaks Puyuma?
Mostly older adults.
What do 'born of the bamboo' and 'born of a stone' refer to?
They are the origin stories that name the two clusters of Puyuma villages. Nanwang and Apapulu belong to the bamboo cluster; the Katipul villages, among them Kasavakan and Ulivelivek, to the stone one.