Lost Languages of Papua New Guinea

It has been reported that several languages previously known to be spoken in PNG have already been lost.

Thanks to the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL *), the Australian National University and the University of Papua New Guinea's work on languages it can be said that the following languages have already died out.

Language	Region or Province	Comment
BINA	Central Province	In the year 2000 this language only had two primary speakers.
REMA	Morehead District, Western Province
KANIET	Anchorite and Kaniet Islands of Western Manus Province.
ARIBWATSA	Morobe Province	No known speakers.
HERMIT	Luf and Maron Island, in Hermit - Manus Province
MULAHA	Southeast of Gaire - Central Province
OUMA	Labu - Central Province
URUAVA	South Eastern coast of Bougainville
KARAMI	Inland border of Gulf and Western province
YOBA	North of Magori, Central province	Two non primary speakers

Information extracted from article by Dr. Steven Winduo - director of the Melanesian and Pacific studies (MAPS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Papua New Guinea.

* The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) deals with over 285 of the PNG "tokples" languages.
Please visit a page on this web site about the work of SIL

In an early 2015 report on local PNG television- EMTV, Dr Sakarepe Kamene, an academic at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). said “Out of 800 languages (in Papua New Guinea), half of that number has less than 2,000 speakers; that means half of our languages are threatened". -- http://giaman.com/pg/?19c5b6