| Konda | |
|---|---|
| Yaben, Ogit | |
| Native to | Southwest Papua,Indonesia |
| Region | Bird's Head Peninsula |
| Ethnicity | Yaben |
Native speakers | 1,500 (2025)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | knd |
| Glottolog | kond1303 |
  Konda  Konda  Konda | |
| Coordinates:1°50′S132°04′E / 1.83°S 132.06°E /-1.83; 132.06 | |
Konda (Ogit, Yabin) is the northwesternmost of theSouth Bird's Head languages, spoken inIndonesia, on the island ofNew Guinea. It is spoken by approximately 1,500 people in the Konda District of theSorong Selatan Regency, and is considered "endangered" byEthnologue.[2][1]: 207
Konda is a member of theTrans–New Guinea languages, spoken on the northwestern corner of the island ofNew Guinea. They are all located on the south side of theBird's Head peninsula inIndonesia.[3]: 571 It is spoken in scattered villages in the area, including Wamargege, Simora, Demen, Sisir, and the namesake village, Konda.[1]: 207 [4] Within the village of Konda, it is spoken by the Yaben people, not the Tabit people who also live in the village; as a result, some researchers prefer to use the nameYaben for the language.[1]: 223
Konda is most closely related toYahadian, its neighbor to the southeast. The two languages appear to form adialect continuum. Yahadian speakers in the village of Mugim reported that they could "easily" understand Konda speakers.[5] They have an estimated lexical overlap of 61%.[1]: 207 They form a fairly distinctive branch of theSouth Bird's Head languages; among other features, they are the only two of the SBH languages not to mark gender on nouns.[3]: 604
Konda is poorly documented, with only enough data for a grammatical sketch and a few focused studies on specific aspects of the language, such as possessives.[3]: 628 [1]
Konda has fairly simplemorphology compared to its neighbors (except Yahadian, which shares Konda's simple morphology). It does not index the verb's arguments via affixes, unlike other South Bird's Head languages. It also does not mark gender or person via affixes.[3]: 591–592 Word order and syntactic structure are the primary determinants of the semantic structure, and the language predominantly usesSubject-Object-Verb (SOV) order.[1]: 207
