Amto language

Spoken in

• Amto - Musan Amto (Ki)
• Musan ( Siawi )

Office

Amto is a small village on Simaiya ( Samaia ), a tributary of the upper Sepik, in Yapsie Rural local- level government of the province of Sandaun Telefomin District of Papua New Guinea. It is located about 5 kilometers south of the Sepik in the mountains of the West Range, which forms the northwestern foothills of the Bismarck Mountains, New Guinea.

The 300 inhabitants of the mountain village and the neighboring villages Sisilo, Habiyon and Amu who live in the valley, speak a completely separate language, Amto (or Ki) which are subsumed under the Papuan languages, only in the East used the even smaller group of Musan ( Siawi ) a linguistically related idiom. North west on the Sepik as the Idam Abau is spoken, even east prevail Sepik - Ramu languages ​​for which the Amto - Musan form a linguistic island, adjacent to the island of the Left May languages ​​in the east. The Amto were especially hostile to the neighboring Idam before tribal fights were banned by the government.

About the language are no further detailed investigations. It belongs naturally to the highly endangered languages ​​.

Like the neighboring Abau Sepik live Amto in community houses, stilt houses, in which the hearths of men on the one who are the women on the other side, the children sleep with women, but can move freely in the house. To porches are located at both end faces of the houses with ladder wells. They sleep in hammocks. A special form of these houses is that - on the whole Sepik and the Highlands spread - Dance House ( amto fokiya ), where the dormitories are located on either side of the central, free-swinging dance place.