Kamula language

Kamula is spoken in two widely separated areas,^[2]: 80 including in Kamiyami village of the Wawoi Falls area in Bamu Rural LLG, Western Province, Papua New Guinea.^[3]

Routamaa (1994: 7) estimates that there are about 800 speakers of Kamula located in 3 villages in Western Province, with no dialectal differences reported.^[4] This is because the Kamula had originally lived in camps near Samokopa in the northern area, but a group had split off and moved to Wasapea in the south only around 50 years ago.^[5]: 14

• Kesiki, at Wawoi Falls in Bamu Rural LLG (main village) (6.951833°S 142.654804°E / -6.951833; 142.654804 (Kasigi))
• Samokopa in Bamu Rural LLG (one day's walk from Kesiki) (6.931064°S 142.746689°E / -6.931064; 142.746689 (Samakopa))
• Wasapea (Kamiyami^[6]) in Gogodala Rural LLG (seven days' walk, or 90 km to the south of Kesiki) (7.889003°S 142.648998°E / -7.889003; 142.648998 (Wasapeya))^[7]

In the northern villages of Kesiki and Samokopa, Kamula children were reported as preferring to speak Doso over Kamula. A minority of Kamula people in the northern area also live in Dibiyaso-speaking villages, where they are multilingual in Kamula, Doso, and Dibiyaso. Kamula people in the southern village of Wasapea are also fluent in Gogodala.^[6]

The little data that exists for Kamula pronouns does not fit in with the neighboring East Strickland or Bosavi languages (though 1sg nê likely reflects proto-TNG *na), so Kamula is best left as an unclassified language an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea pending further study.

Attested pronouns are 1sg nɛ̃, 2sg wɛ̃, and ̩pl diɛ.

Kamula phonology:^[8]

The following basic vocabulary words are from Dutton (2010),^[9] Reesink (1976),^[10] and Shaw (1986),^[11] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:^[12]