Kamula language


Kamula is a Trans–New Guinea language that is unclassified within that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross. Noting insufficient evidence, Pawley and Hammarström leave it as unclassified.

Demographics

Kamula is spoken in two widely separated areas, including in Kamiyami village of the Wawoi Falls area in Bamu Rural LLG, Western Province, Papua New Guinea.
Routamaa estimates that there are about 800 speakers of Kamula located in 3 villages in Western Province, with no dialectal differences reported. This is because the Kamula had originally lived in camps near Samokopa in the northern area, but a group had split off and moved to Wasapea in the south only around 50 years ago.
In the northern villages of Kesiki and Samokopa, Kamula children were reported as preferring to speak Doso over Kamula. A minority of Kamula people in the northern area also live in Dibiyaso-speaking villages, where they are multilingual in Kamula, Doso, and Dibiyaso. Kamula people in the southern village of Wasapea are also fluent in Gogodala.

Classification

The little data that exists for Kamula pronouns does not fit in with the neighboring East Strickland or Bosavi languages, so Kamula is best left as an unclassified language an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea pending further study.
Attested pronouns are 1sg, 2sg, and ̩pl.

Phonology

Kamula phonology:

Consonants

Kamula has 12 consonants.
BilabialDentalAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
plosivept̪dk ɡ
nasalmn
fricativesh
approximantwj
lateral approximantl

Vowels

Kamula has 7 vowels.
FrontCentralBack
closeiu
close-mideo
open-midɛɔ
opena