Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 9, 2026

Waskia language

Waskia is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken on half of Karkar Island, and a small part of the shore on the mainland, by 20,000 people; language use is vigorous. The Waskia share their island with speakers of Takia, an Oceanic language which has been restructured under the influence of Waskia, which is the inter-community language. Waskia has been documented extensively by Malcolm Ross and is being further researched by Andrew Pick.

Last revised
Jul 9, 2026
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≈ 2 min
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Wikipedia ↗
Waskia
RegionPapua New Guinea
Native speakers
20,000 (2007)1
Language codes
ISO 639-3wsk
Glottologwask1241

Waskia (Vaskia, Woskia) is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea.2 It is spoken on half of Karkar Island, and a small part of the shore on the mainland, by 20,000 people; language use is vigorous. The Waskia share their island with speakers of Takia, an Oceanic language which has been restructured under the influence of Waskia, which is the inter-community language. Waskia has been documented extensively by Malcolm Ross and is being further researched by Andrew Pick.

Waskia is spoken in Tokain (4°42′56″S 145°38′02″E / 4.715575°S 145.633995°E / -4.715575; 145.633995 (Tokain)), a village in Malas ward, Sumgilbar Rural LLG on the coast of mainland New Guinea, and on Karkar Island, with the island and mainland varieties being lexically divergent from each other.34

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive voiceless p t k
voiced b d ɡ
Fricative s
Nasal m n ŋ
Approximant w l j
Trill r

/ɡ/ can be pronounced as a fricative [ɣ] when in intervocalic positions.5

Vowels

Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a

Comparisons

Below are some Waskia lexical forms compared with Amako and Proto-Northern Adelbert.2: 473 

gloss Waskia Amako Proto-Northern
Adelbert
hornbill baram bar *baram
pig buruk bur *buruk
sit – beng- *bug-
year barat – *barat
skin guang – *guaŋ
thick gurum uŋur *gurum
liver gomang gom *gemaŋ
turn gira- girka- *girik-
breadfruit – kid *kidar
banana – kud *kudi
lime kaur ka *kapur
day, sun kam – *kam
nape komang kumandup *kumaŋ
plate tawir taw *tabir
LOC te te *te
rain tiwik tiv *t(e/i)ik
References

References

  1. Waskia at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Pick, Andrew (2020). A reconstruction of Proto-Northern Adelbert phonology and lexicon (PDF) (PhD dissertation). University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-06-04. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  3. United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
  4. Pick, Andrew (2019). "Gildipasi language project: tumbuna stories and tumbuna knowledge". Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS, University of London.
  5. Barker, Fay; Lee, Janet (n.d.). A tentative phonemic statement of Waskia. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Further reading

Further reading