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the Gamkonora language (with speakers located in the Gamkonora village) going south
will always be said ‘up’ because it leads to the Sultan of Jailolo, to the Sultan of Ternate,
and to the Sultan of Tidore. Meanwhile, if we go north, say to Ibu district, then a speaker of
Gamkonora will always say “down”. All distances beyond areas that they know (Halmahera)
including Java are called “sea”.

The following is an example of conversation between Ratih (12 years old) with her father.
She wanted to go after her friends who had been waiting for her.
Dong ‘tunggu’ di lao.
They wait at sea

In this case, the friends were not at or in the sea but waiting in someone’s house which
was located, from the perspective of the speaker, in the direction of the sea. So, ‘di lao’
can mean on the side of the road, in front of the house or under trees. Everything leads
to the sea. The sea is located in front of Ratih’s house. This sentence contains elements of
Austronesian grammar mixed with the complex direction terms from non-Austronesian
language grammar.

Another example, from Tondo (2013) , of SVO sentence order can be taken from the Kao
language which is also included in Sahu sub-group of North Halmahera language group.
Ngoi ta-owol igong
I squeeze coconut

In the Gamkonora language, ngoi is the first person pronoun, ‘saya’, and igong is coconut.
In this sentence the verb to squeeze ‘peras’ is paloso. This is an SVO word order, typical of
Austronesian languages.

Language Kinship in North Maluku
North Maluku society is a multilingual society. Language can convey identity. In North
Maluku, we can infer that as it has 31 languages, it also has 31 ethnic groups. Multilingualism
is common. An example, collected during the study, can be given. There was a change of
two sub-district heads in the sub-district of South Ibu. Both of them were women. The
sub-district head we knew in 2011 was from Tobaru but she was fluent in the Gamkonora
language. She was then posted to Sahu sub-district and her successor, who was originally

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