Liki language

Liki [lio] is a moribund language with only 8 active speakers left in Liki Island, yet based on SIL report in 2005, the ethnic population was still around 320 people (Eberhard et al., 2025). Liki language is geographically located in Papua province, Sarmi regency, Sarmi district, Liki and Armo villages. Liki belongs to the family of Austronesian languages, specifically Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Western Oceanic, North New Guinea, Sarmi-Jayapura Bay, Sarmi, Sobeic, Sobei-Liki (Hammarström et al., 2024). The language use significantly decreases due to shifting to Papuan Malay [pmy]. It could be argued that Liki is the same as Sobei [sob] due to lexicon similarities. However, some features in Liki are distinctive, making it difficult for Sobei speakers to communicate in this language.

A fisherman returning from fishing at dusk (Photo by Mohammad Lutfi, August 16 2025)

Liki speakers lived in the three island clusters, called Mehloar for Liki Island, Lamsutu for Empty Island, and Nirumoar for Armo Island. Nevertheless, the last 8 speakers only inhabit Liki Island nowadays. The ethnic population consists of several big clans, namely Teno, Kiman, Weirau, Bibin, Marohis, Esris, Warouw, Morsau, and Palege. Since Teno is the former and largest clan among them, the chief of tribe is commonly led by Teno clan. Most of them live as fishermen due to the abundant marine stocks. Daily fishing activities are deeply embedded in their cultural traditions and knowledge systems, with skills and practices passed down through the generations. Although fishing remains the dominant livelihood, a few members also engage in small-scale farming, cultivating crops such as sago, cassava, and betel nut.

A preliminary wordlist in Liki was collected by Sterner & Sterner (1974), involving a few super basic vocabularies, for example tomtu for man, mufni for woman, mani for bird, fati for stone, and rani for water. Recently, a wordlist documentation has been conducted in Liki Island to preserve and safeguard this language. Some word examples that have been documented are yau for I (first-person plural), u for you (second-person singular), ribe for they (third-person plural), palo for pig (animal), ina for fish (animal), tes for one (number), lu for two (number), arom for see (verb), fedara for red (adjective), fendu for earth (noun), natu for child (noun), and lahap for no (negation). Additionally, word order in Liki is SVO, which is similar to other common Austronesian languages. The SVO of Liki can be represented by the following sentences, ut lahap arom ya for you don’t see me and yat yahim e for I call her.

 

References

Eberhard, D. M., Simon, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (Eds.). (2025). Ethnologue: Language of the world (28th ed.). SIL International. https://www.ethnologue.com

Hammarström, H., Forkel, R., Haspelmath, M., & Bank, S. (2024). Glottolog 5.1. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://glottolog.org

Sterner, B., & Sterner, J. (1974). Likiwini.