Fitou

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Fitou (Vitou) is spoken by over 600 people (2004) living in a single village, Takar, on the north coast of the Pantai Timur district of Sarmi regency in Indonesia's Papua province. Fitou is also spoken by over 200 people living in the nearby primarily Edwas speaking village of Nengke. The village was named Takar by the Indonesian government. Vitou [fitoᵘ] is the name speakers use for their language (Lee and Wambaliau 2004: 2-3, 4.)

Galis (1955) 28 comparative terms for Kwesten (this is most likely Kwesten of Takar village i.e. Fitou)

Smits and Voorhoeve eds. (1994: 18-266) three comparative vocabularies of Kwesten of Takar after an unnamed teacher and two unnamed constables respectively

Lee and Wambaliau (2004: 40-48) 239 comparative terms and (pp. 57-62) 21 sentences for Vitou of Takar

There is no published phonology of Fitou. Comparison of Lee and Wambaliau's (2004: 40-48, 57-62) vocabulary with Smits and Voorhoeve's (1994: 18-266) colonial-era vocabularies and to those of Fitou's nearest relatives, Tena and Kwinsu, allows us to posit 12 consonants and 5 vowels for Fitou as follows:

In addition to the simple vowels given above, five diphthongs are found as follows:

Any consonant, vowel or diphthong can occur intially or medially, except for plain and round velar voiceless stops /k kʷ/ which do not occur medially except in initial cluster /dk/ [dg].

Only a restricted set of consonants occurs word-finally:

Lee and Wambaliau (2004: 41) give free pronouns for Vitou of Takar as follows:

Nothing is known about Fitou verbal morphology besides what little can be discerned from the examples given in Smits and Voorhoeve (1994: 18-266) and Lee and Wambaliau (2004: 40-48, 57-62.)