Wooi
Wooi is the name of both the language and the people settling in the villages Dumani, Woinap and Wooi at the western tip of Yapen Island (Indonesia) in the Geelvink Bay, north of Papuas mainland.
Wooi is classified as Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, South Halmahera-Geelvink Bay, Geelvink Bay, Yapen, Central Western in Grimes(1988). Approximately 1600 peoples still speak Wooi; the language is claimed to have 77% lexical similarity with neighboring Pom, Marau, and Ansus.
In Indonesia currently many languages are becoming endangered, most of them in the far Eastern provinces of the archipelago, an area of only 1% of Indonesia’s population, but approximately 60% of the country’s speech communities. Thus, the Wooi project aims not only for the documentation of one language, but the establishment of sustainable structures for language documentation in Indonesian Papua.
Wooi is classified as Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, South Halmahera-Geelvink Bay, Geelvink Bay, Yapen, Central Western in Grimes(1988). Approximately 1600 peoples still speak Wooi; the language is claimed to have 77% lexical similarity with neighboring Pom, Marau, and Ansus.
In Indonesia currently many languages are becoming endangered, most of them in the far Eastern provinces of the archipelago, an area of only 1% of Indonesia’s population, but approximately 60% of the country’s speech communities. Thus, the Wooi project aims not only for the documentation of one language, but the establishment of sustainable structures for language documentation in Indonesian Papua.