Papua New Guinean Languages and Provincial Boundaries, the Case of New Britain Island.

Deborah Salle
Feb 19, 2023
1 min read

Do you know of languages that cross over provincial boundaries in Papua New Guinea?

Why is this piece of information important?

A recent discovery for me is a beautiful language called Meramera. This language overlaps the provincial boundary of East and West New Britain provinces in Papua New Guinea. When answering the question, 'How many languages does your province have?", such information will help you give exact numbers.

East New Britain has 21 active languages as per the information provided in this link https://pnglanguages.sil.org/resources/provinces/province/East%20New%20Britain#:~:text=Over%20800%20languages%20are%20spoken,Ethnologue%3A%20Languages%20of%20the%20World.

West New Britain has 30 active languages spoken as shown here https://pnglanguages.sil.org/resources/provinces/province/West%20New%20Britain.

Great! 21 languages in ENB, 30 languages in WNB and that's a total of 51 languages on the island, you might say. However, that is not the case.

You will realize that 7 languages are shared between these 2 provinces. They are, Amio-Gelimi, Mengen, Mengseng, Meramera, Nakanai, Pele-Ata and Tomoip.

Knowing that, we can say that the island of New Britain has 44 living languages, not 51 and it shares 7 languages across its provincial boundary.

Kuba ana sele! (Thank you very much in Meramera language).

Now I better get back to my translation quota for today. I just got sidetracked for an hour. :)