Heraan language

Heraʻan
Amanava Heraʻa
Native to	Selayar
Native speakers	19 million (2015 census) L2 speakers: 16.3 million (2015 census)
Language family	Boreaurelian Manamanan South Manamanan Hero-Tanganic Selayaric Heraʻan
Dialects	Wanaperaʻan Mawuran Ruawan Tinataʻan Vahilan Leyan
Writing system	Latin (Selayari alphabet) Selayari Braille
Official status
Official language in	Selayar
Regulated by	Ramuwaʻa na ʻAmanava Heraʻa
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sr
ISO 639-2	slr
ISO 639-3	slr

Heraʻan language (Amanava Heraʻa ['aːmanava hɛ'raʔaː]) is a Boreaurelian language spoken in Selayar where it is the sole official language and the language of the Heraʻan people, one the country's dominant ethnic groups. In 2015, it was spoken as a first language by 18 million, primarily the Heraʻan people, and as a second language by 16 million, particularly ethnic minorities in Selayar.

It is closely related to other languages in Selayar, such as Reyan languages, Vayaran language, Rahese language, and more distantly to other Boreaurelian languages around the Manamana Bay.

Heraʻan is an agglutinative and polysynthetic language, largely trisyllabic, with verb-object-subject word order, and a typologically unusual kind of morphosyntactic alignment that is dubbed the Boreaurelian allignment by linguists.

Phonology

Heraʻan has 15 phonemes, 11 of them are consonants and 4 are vowels. Syllable structure is (C)(V)(C)VCV, the parenthesis indicates it is optional.

Vowels

Vowel length is phonemic in Heraʻan; all four vowels also have a long form, though it is not usually indicated in the official orthography.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u [u], [uː]
Mid	e [eː], [ɛ]
Open		a [a], [aː]

Examples

Numbers

The numbers (a wirangana) in Heraʻan are of two sets, the common and arana sets. The arana set is used exclusively for human, eg. age. The arana set are usually derived from partial reduplication of the common set, though this is not always the case.