Yessan-Mayo language

Not to be confused with Mayo language.

Yessan-Mayo (also known as Yesan, Mayo, and natively known as Yamano^[1]) is a Papuan language spoken by 2000 people in Papua New Guinea. It is spoken in Maio (4.21379°S 142.675929°E / -4.21379; 142.675929 (Maio)) and Yessan (4.219025°S 142.66658°E / -4.219025; 142.66658 (Yessan)) villages of Yessan ward, Ambunti Rural LLG, East Sepik Province.^[2][3]

Yessan-Mayo
Yamano
Region	East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea
Native speakers	(2,000 cited 2000 census)[1]
Language family	Sepik Tama Yessan-Mayo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yss
Glottolog	yess1239
ELP	Yessan-Mayo

Phonology

The phonology of Yessan-Mayo is described in Foley (2018)^[4] as such:

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close		ɨ
Mid		ə	ɔ
Open	a

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
					plain	labialized
Plosive	plain		t		k	kʷ
	prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd		ᵑg	ᵑgʷ
Fricative		ɸ	s				h
Nasal		m	n
Trill			r
Approximant			l	j		w

Pronouns

Foreman (1974)^[5] describes two kinds of pronouns in Yessan-Mayo: non-emphatic and emphatic pronouns.

In addition to the non-emphatic pronouns, there is also the reflexive pronoun kwarara (self), as well as the demonstrative pronouns op (this) and otop (that).

Non-emphatic

		singular	dual	plural
1st person		an	nis	nim
2nd person		ni	kep	kom
3rd person	male	ri	rip	rim
	female	ti

Emphatic

		singular	dual	plural
1st person		arin	nisis	nirim
2nd person		nirin	kerip	kerim
3rd person	male	atar	atep	atem
	female	atat

External links

• Paradisec has a collection of Don Laycock's (DL2) that includes Yessan-Mayo language materials.