Maʼya
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Raja Ampat Islands
Ethnicity	Ma'ya
Native speakers	(5,000 cited 2000–2001)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Eastern Malayo-Polynesian South Halmahera–West New Guinea Raja Ampat–South Halmahera Raja Ampat Nuclear Raja Ampat Ma'ya–Salawati Maʼya
Dialects	Biga Ma'ya Kawe Legenyem Wauyai
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: slz – Ma'ya kgb – Kawe lcc – Legenyem wuy – Wauyai
Glottolog	raja1258
ELP	Legenyem
Maʼya
Coordinates:0°52′S130°39′E / 0.86°S 130.65°E /-0.86; 130.65

Maʼya is anAustronesian language of theRaja Ampat islands inSouthwest Papua, Indonesia. It is part of theSouth Halmahera–West New Guinea (SHWNG) subgroup and is spoken by about 6,000 people in coastal villages on the islands ofBatanta,Misool,Salawati, andWaigeo,^[2] on the boundary between Austronesian andPapuan languages.^[3]

Maʼya has five dialects: three on the island ofWaigeo (Legenyem,Wauyai, andKawe), one onSalawati and part ofBatanta, and one onMisool.^[4] Theprestige dialect is the one on Salawati.^{[citation needed]} The varieties spoken on Salawati and Misool are characterized by the occurrence of/s/ and/ʃ/ in some words, where the Waigeo dialects (and other relatedSHWNG languages) have/t/ and/c/ respectively.^[2]

OnWaigeo Island, the three dialects are^[5]: 6

• TheKawe dialect in Selpele and Salyo villages in the northwest part of the island.
• TheLaganyan (Legenyem) dialect is spoken in Araway, Beo, and Lopintol villages on the Mayalibit Bay coast.
• TheWauyai (Wawiyai) dialect is spoken in Wawiyai village on the Kabui Bay coast.

InGlottolog 5.2 (2025), the Ma'ya dialects are classified as follows:^[6]

• Misool-Salawati Ma'ya
  • Banlol
  • Batanta Ma'ya
  • Nuclear Ma'ya
• Waigeo Maya
  • Biga
  • Kawe
  • Legenyem
  • Wauyai

• Twelve consonants may also be heard as palatalized/pʲ,bʲ,tʲ,dʲ,kʲ,ɡʲ/;/fʲ,sʲ/;/mʲ,nʲ,lʲ,wʲ/.
• When in word-final position, six plosives can occur as unreleased[p̚,b̚,t̚,d̚,k̚,ɡ̚], as well as nasals[m̚,n̚,ŋ̚].
• /l/ can be heard as retroflex[ɭ] in word-final positions, and when preceded by a back vowel.
• /s/ can be pronounced as[ʃ] when between two/i/ vowel sounds.
• /ɾ/ can also be heard as a trill[r], when in word-final positions.
• /n/ can be heard as a velar[ŋ], when preceding velar stops.[ŋ] may also be a loan phoneme.
• The glottal stop[ʔ] is heard mostly phonetically, in word-initial position before initial vowels.
• Other sounds/ɦ,x,z/ may also occur as a result of Arabic and Indonesian loanwords.

• Other sounds/ɪ,ʊ/ are considered archiphonemes, and can also phonetically occur as a result of/i,u/ within vowel clusters.^[7]

In Maʼya bothtone andstress are lexicallydistinctive.^[2][8] This means both the stress and the pitch of a word may affect its meaning. The stress and tone are quite independent from one another, in contrast to their occurrence inSwedish andSerbo-Croatian. The language has threetonemes (high, rising and falling). Out of over a thousand Austronesian languages, there are only a dozen with lexical tone; in this case it appears to be a remnant of shift fromPapuan languages.

Lexical tone is found only in final syllables.^[9]

• Matbat language, a neighboring language with more extreme Papuan influence and five tones.

• van der Leeden, Alex (1993).Maʼya: Phonology. Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia. p. 97.ISBN 9789798258015.

• South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages
• Languages of Western New Guinea
• Tonal languages in non-tonal families

• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Language articles with old Ethnologue 18 speaker data
• Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from March 2024
• Pages with plain IPA