Kei language
Encyclopedia
Kei is an Indonesian language
spoken by approximately inhabitants (2000) of the Moluccas. They live on the islands
of Kai Besar
and Kai Kecil
, as well as neighbouring islands, in the regency of Kabupaten Maluku Tenggara Barat.
within the larger Austronesian language group
.
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
spoken by approximately inhabitants (2000) of the Moluccas. They live on the islands
Kai Islands
The Kai Islands of Indonesia are in the south-eastern part of the Maluku Islands, in Maluku Province.-Geography:...
of Kai Besar
Kai Besar
Kai Besar is one of the Kai Islands which are part of the Maluku Islands, Indonesia. Its area is 550 km². The other main island in the Kai Islands group is Kai Kecil . The northern tip is called Tanjung Borang, and southern tip called Tanjung Weduar....
and Kai Kecil
Kai Kecil
Kai Kecil is a part of the Kai Islands group of the Maluku Islands, Indonesia. Its area is 399 km2. The other main island in the group is Kai Besar . It contains the major town of Tual....
, as well as neighbouring islands, in the regency of Kabupaten Maluku Tenggara Barat.
Classification
The Kei language belongs to the group of nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languagesNuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages
The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a branch of the Austronesian family, proposed by Wouk & Ross , that are thought to have dispersed from a possible homeland in Sulawesi. They are called nuclear because they are the conceptual core of the Malayo-Polynesian family, including both Malay and...
within the larger Austronesian language group
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
.