Retta language
Retta is a Papuan language spoken on Pura and Ternate islands, located between Pantar and Alor in the Alor archipelago of Indonesia. It is spoken by a few thousand people, and is considered an endangered language by Ethnologue.
It is not related to but not mutually intelligible with Blagar, which is spoken on the north side of Pura Island, and is unrelated to the Austronesian language Alorese, which is spoken on the north side of Ternate. One of its most distinctive features is a morphophonological process where some words can be intensified or made vulgar by replacing an sound with an sound.
Classification
Retta is a member of the Timor–Alor–Pantar languages, a group of approximately 30 languages at the western edge of the Papuan languages. It is part of the Alor–Pantar branch within the TAP languages. Bayesian analysis suggests that Retta is most closely related to the Blagar language, followed by the Pura language. These three languages, called the "Straits languages", form a group apart from the Pantar languages.Geographic distribution
Retta is spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia. It is primarily spoken on two small islands, Pura and Ternate, plus two recent settlements on the coast of the larger island of Alor, facing toward Pura and Ternate.The language's namesake village, Retta, is on the southern coast of Pura. Pura is a small island but it is home to both the Reta and Blagar languages, which are related but not mutually intelligible. Inaccessibility and hostility between the villages on Pura allowed the two languages to coexist in close proximity. In modern times, cross-village communication has increased, but has been generally done in the local lingua francas: Bahasa Indonesia and Malay.
Three villages on Ternate speak Retta, as they were established by Retta-speakers from Pura in the early 20th century, possibly due to religious conflict. Ternate is smaller than Pura, but like Pura, it is multilingual. On the north shore of Ternate, villagers speak Alorese, an unrelated Austronesian language.
Phonology
Consonants
Retta has 16 consonants, which is a larger consonant inventory than most Alor–Pantar languages:The palatal approximant also occurs in Retta but is analyzed as an allophone of the vowel rather than a separate phoneme. occurs mostly in loanwords or other non-native words.
Vowels
Retta has eight single vowels, which differ in length, height, and backness. Three are always long vowels, two are always short vowels, and the remaining three are short in most contexts but can be made long via phonological processes.| Front | Central | Back | |
| unrounded | rounded | ||
| Close | |||
| Close-mid | |||
| Open-mid | |||
| Open |
Retta has both diphthongs and vowel sequences. All attested diphthongs move from low-to-high or back-to-front, and the high vowels and may manifest as the glides and in diphthongs.
Phonological processes
Like many other languages, Retta features nasal place assimilation, in which a nasal's place of articulation moves to the place of a neighboring consonant. It does not require consonants at the start of a word, but if there is no word-initial consonant, the initial vowel is pre-aspirated. For instance, 'fruit' is underlyingly but is pronounced as. This pre-aspiration is distinct from a word-initial voiceless glottal fricative ; 'fruit' forms a minimal pair with 'rough'.Morphology
Sound-symbolic contrast
Retta has a unique non-productive morphophonological process. In approximately 30 words, replacing an sound with an sound changes the meaning of the word, increasing its "vulgarity, severity, force of action, or size". Examples include:| L gloss | L form | R form | R gloss |
| pull | pull hard, yank | ||
| not good | bad, terrible | ||
| break it | destroy it | ||
| penis | penis |