Page 187 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

from Sahu, was posted in South Ibu sub-district. She did not spend a long time learning to
speak Gamkonora and Waioli, two languages spoken in the area of her administration, and
neither did the sub-district head who came from Tobaru. Language learning is made easier
when the languages are related, as was the case here. When the degree of difference of
one language variety is only at the level of dialect, then learning is easiest.
Grimes and Grimes (1984) did research on the kinship of languages in North Maluku
using lexicostatistics based on the degree of similarity of the basic vocabulary of two or
more languages. Based on this, degrees of language kinship can be determined from
language family to dialect. Based on the percentage of similarity of the basic vocabulary,
languages in North Maluku can be grouped into two families, Austronesian and non-
Austronesian. The degree of language relatedness can be seen in the following chart.

Language Kinship Chart Based on Vocabulary Similarity

MAN
SUL 72 SUL
GEB 15 18 GEB
PAT 13 13 45 PAT
MAB 17 17 43 70 MAB
BUL 14 16 42 51 65 BUL
E-M 14 15 27 36 33 33 E-M
TID 9 10 7 9 11 7 13 TID
TER 9 9 6 8 9 9 14 75 TER
GAM 5 7 8 10 11 10 13 49 61 GAM
SAH 6 6 7 8 10 10 13 48 55 72 SAH*
WAI 7 8 8 9 11 11 11 49 55 74 80 WAI
GAL 6 7 6 7 6 6 10 45 58 44 44 46 GAL
LOL 6 7 8 5 6 4 9 44 54 45 47 48 76 LOL
KAO 8 9 7 9 9 11 10 50 54 61 64 62 64 68 KAO
PAG 7 6 6 6 7 7 8 42 49 53 56 59 62 70 82 PAG**
MOD 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 38 42 50 52 56 61 67 70 80 MOD*
TBR 5 6 6 6 7 5 8 39 47 48 49 55 59 63 66 69 71 TBR*
TBL 6 8 8 8 9 8 7 37 45 50 48 53 60 71 67 70 67 63 TBL*
TUG 6 9 7 6 6 6 9 32 39 37 40 47 55 57 54 61 66 64 78 TUG

Source : Grimes and Grimes (1984: 41)

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