You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in Portuguese. (May 2022)Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Portuguese article. Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consideradding a topic to this template: there are already 538 articles in themain category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing Portuguese Wikipedia article at [[:pt:Língua ekari]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template{{Translated|pt|Língua ekari}} to thetalk page. For more guidance, seeWikipedia:Translation.

Ekari (alsoEkagi,Kapauku,Mee) is aTrans–New Guinea language spoken by about 100,000 people in thePaniai lakes region of the Indonesian province ofCentral Papua, including the villages ofEnarotali,Mapia andMoanemani. This makes it the second-most populousPapuan language in Indonesian New Guinea afterWestern Dani. Language use is vigorous. Documentation is quite limited.

The voiced velar stop/ɡᶫ/ is pronounced with lateral release. Doble describes both /k/ and /ɡᶫ/ as being labialized[kʷ,ɡᶫʷ] after the back vowels/o,u/ (i.e.,okei'they',euga'more'), with/g/ having 'varying' degrees of the lateral.^[2] Staroverov & Tebay describe/ɡᶫ/ as being velar lateral[ɡᶫ] before front vowels and uvular non-lateral[ɢʶ] before non-front vowels. When lateral, there is usually a stop onset, but occasionally just[ʟ] is heard.^[3]

/j/ is a "more palatalized[ʒ]" (perhaps[ʝ] or[ʑ]) before the high front vowel/i/ (e.g.,yina'insect').^[2]

Both Doble (1987) and Staroverov & Tebay (2019) describe five vowel qualities. Long vowels and diphthongs are analyzed as sequences.

Ekari has pitch accent. One syllable in a word may have a high tone, contrasting with words without a high tone. If the vowel is long or a diphthong and not at the end of the word, the high tone is phonetically rising.

CV words have no tone contrast. CVV words may be mid/low or high. (In all of these patterns, here and following, initial C is optional.)

Words of the following shapes may have a contrastive high tone on the final syllable: CVCV, CVCVV. Words of the following shapes may have either a rising or a falling tone on the first long syllable: CVVCV, CVVCVV, CVCVVCVV, CVVCVCV (rare), CVVCVCVV (rare). The following word shapes do not have contrastive tone: CVCVCV, CVCVVCV, CVCVCVV, and words of 4 or more syllables.

• Doble, Marion (1962).Essays on Kapauku grammar. Nieuw Guinea Studiën. Vol. 6. pp. 152–155,211–218,279–298.
• Doble, Marion (1987). "A description of some features of Ekari language structure".Oceanic Linguistics.26 (1/2):55–113.doi:10.2307/3623166.JSTOR 3623166.
• Drabbe, Peter (1952).Spraakkunst van het Ekagi, Wisselmeren, Nederlands Nieuw Guinea (in Dutch). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Steltenpool, J (1969).Ekagi-Dutch-English-Indonesian Dictionary. VKI 56. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Staroverov, Peter; Tebay, Sören E. (2019)."Posterior Affricate in Mee and Consonant-Vowel Place Interactions".Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology.7.doi:10.3765/amp.v7i0.4481.

Materials on Ekari are included in the open accessArthur Capell collections held byParadisec:

• AC1
• AC2

• Paniai Lakes languages
• Languages of Western New Guinea

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 25
• Articles needing translation from Portuguese Wikipedia
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Language articles with old speaker data
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles containing Ekari-language text
• CS1 Dutch-language sources (nl)