Berik language
Berik is a Papuan language spoken in Indonesia. Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor River, in Sarmi Regency, Papua Province.
US linguist John McWhorter cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware". Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana , affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.
Locations
In Sarmi, Berik is spoken in:- Tor Atas District
- *Beu Village
- *Bota-Bora Village
- *Dangken Village
- *Kanderjan Village
- *Safron Tane Village
- *Samanente Village
- *Taminambor Village
- *Tenwer Village
- *Toganto Village
- *Waaf village
- Sarmi Timur District
- *Sewan Village
- Bonggo District
- *Tarontha Village
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Berik has the common six vowel system.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | a |
Verbal morphology
Westrum briefly indicates that Berik encodes whether the action takes place during the day or during the night in the verb morphology, a rare case of periodic tense whose markers are not easily segmentable.| Period | Present | Past | Future |
| Diurnal | gulbana | gulbanant | gulbafa |
| Nocturnal | gulbasa | gulbafant | gubafa |