Heraan language
| Heraʻan | |
|---|---|
| Āmanava Heraʻā | |
| Native to | Selayar |
Native speakers | 19 million (2015 census) L2 speakers: 16.3 million (2015 census) |
| Dialects |
|
| 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 (Āmanava Heraʻā ['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; but three of the four long vowels occur in only a handful of word roots, the exception being /aː/.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u [u], [uː] | |
| Mid | e [eː], [ɛ] | ||
| Open | a [a], [aː] |
Consonants
Grammar
Boreaurelian allignment
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.