Kafoa language

Kafoa, or Jafoo, is a Papuan language of Alor Island in the Alor archipelago of Indonesia. Although Kafoa speakers refer to both themselves and their language with the name "Kafoa", this word is not well known in the area.^[2][3] Kafoa speakers are frequently multilingual, also speaking Malay, Klon and Abui. Children are typically initially taught Malay by their parents and later acquire Kafoa after having reached school age.^[2]

Kafoa
Jafoo
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Alor Island, East Nusa Tenggara
Native speakers	1,000 (2013)[1]
Language family	Trans–New Guinea ? West Bomberai ? Timor–Alor–Pantar Alor–Pantar Alor ? Kafoa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kpu
Glottolog	kafo1240

Phonology

The data in this section are taken from Baird (2017).^[2]

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ ⟨ng⟩
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Fricative		f	s			h
Semivowel		w		j ⟨y⟩
Liquid	lateral		l
	rhotic		r

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front		Central		Back
High	i	iː			u	uː
				ʊ	ʊː
						o
Mid
	ɛ	ɛː				ɔː
Low			a	aː

External links

• Kafoa untuk Selamanya (Indonesian-language film)
• Kafoa Archived 2019-08-06 at the Wayback Machine at The Language Archive