Blagar language


Blagar is a Papuan language of Pantar island in the Alor archipelago of Indonesia. The Tereweng lect spoken on Tereweng island off the southeast coast of Pantar is sometimes considered a separate language.
Use of the language is declining in favor of Indonesian. In the 1970s Indonesian replaced Blagar as the language of the church and the mosque. In the early 2000s the introduction of electricity on Pura Island further increased the influence of Indonesian.

Phonology

Vowels

Blagar has five vowels, with a sharp contrast between short and long vowels.

Consonants

BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Plosive
Implosive
Fricative
Nasal
Trill
Lateral
Approximant

Grammar

Blagar is morphologically simple. It has a limited number of pronouns, adverbs, particles, auxiliaries and clitics, but an unrestricted number of verbs and nouns. Verbs can be transitive or intransitive, and nouns can be alienable or inalienable. Nouns are placed before adjectives.
BlagarGlossEnglish
Ne koŋdo boʔori. shirt yellowMy shirt is yellow.
Mehal ʔaŋu guru niaŋ.man that teacher notThat man is not a teacher.
ʔana naiŋ bue. hitHe/she hit me.
Na aiŋ bue niaŋ. hit notI didn't hit you.
Na ne mol veŋ niaŋ. banana with notI don't have a banana.

Questions

BlagarGlossEnglish
ʔ-ene nuba?-name whoWhat's his/her name?
Id ʔaŋa ʔ-ene naba?star this -name whatWhat's the name of this star?
Vet ʔaŋa nuba ʔe?coconut this who Whose coconut is this?

Writing system

The Blagar language uses the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet, and has two digraphs: and.
Uppercase lettersABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Lowercase lettersabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
IPA, ~, ,

Digraphsngsy
IPA

,,, and are only used in foreign place names and loanwords.
Another writing system is also used, which is phonemic and is similar to the writing system of Indonesian.
Lettersabb’deghijklmnngopqrtuvy
IPA,