Bantik language

Bantik
Spoken in	Indonesia
Region	North Sulawesi
Native speakers	unknown (11,000 cited 1981)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Philippine? Sangiric South Bantik
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bnq

Bantik is an endangered is an Austronesian language, perhaps a Philippine language, of North Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is the traditional language of the Bantik people, who are now switching to Manado Malay (the local variety of Indonesian) as their language for everyday communication, though Bantik is still used as a marker of ethnic identity.

Bantik is regarded as a men's language, used by men in private, and it is considered improper to speak to women in Bantik. Very few women under the age of 30 know how to speak it.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low	a

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Voiceless	p	t	k	ʔ
	Voiced	b	d	ɡ
Nasal		m	n	ŋ
Fricative			s		h
Flap			ɾ

Grammar

Morphology

Bantik is agglutinative.

Syntax

The basic sentence orders of Bantik are subject–verb–object and verb–object–subject. The former is used when introducing a new object, the latter when introducing a new subject.

References

• Utsumi, Atsuko (2000). "Field-work on Bantik language". In Kazuto Matsumura. Studies in Minority Languages. pp. 18–20. 
• Utsumi, Atsuko (2000). "Bantik text: Bararogodo? and Uheitinenden". In Tasaku Tsunoda. Basic Materials in Minority Languages. pp. 23–32. 

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:bnq
• Bantik Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database