Introduction

 

The Sawai ethnic group of Indonesia has a population of around 12,000 people. They live in the North Maluku province, Halmahera Tengah and Halmahera Selatan regencies. The Sawai people live in 13 coastal villages on Halmahera island.

The Sawai language is also referred to either the Weda-Sawai language or the Weda language. The ethnologue code is SZW. The linguistic classification is Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, South Halmahera, Southeast. There is dialect chaining among the Austronesian languages of south Halmahera (Whisler 1989a).  This chaining effect is also seen from village to village within the Sawai language.  In addition, villages that have the same religion (either Muslim or Christian), also have a higher percentage of lexical similarities than villages of the alternate religion, even though they might be farther apart geographically. There are four dialects: Weda (highest number of speakers), Sawai (the Kobe and Lelilef villages), Foya-Mafa and Messa-Dote.

Sawai adults and some of the young people speak the Sawai language. The youth are taught North Maluku Malay or Indonesian [IND] first. Some local commerce is done in Sawai. Just under half of the speakers can read their language.