Madurese language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

Madurese in Javanese script

Madurese is a language of the Madurese people of Madura Island and eastern Java, Indonesia; it is also spoken on Kangean Islands and Sapudi Islands. The Kangean dialect may be a separate language. It was traditionally written in the Javanese script, but the Latin alphabet is now more commonly used. The number of speakers, though shrinking, is estimated to be 8-13 million.

Links between Bali-Sasak languages and Madurese are more evident with the "low" form (common form).

[edit] Phonology and morphology

Madurese has more consonants than its neighboring languages due to it having voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and voiced sounds. Similar to Javanese, it has a contrast between dental and alveolar (even retroflex) stops^{[citation needed]}. Nouns are not inflected in gender and are pluralized via reduplication. Its basic word order is SVO. Negation is expressed by putting a negative particle before the verb, adjective or noun phrase. As with other similar languages there are different negative particles for different kinds of negation.

[edit] Common words

• Man: lalake
• Woman: babine
• Yes: iya
• No: enja
• Water: aeng
• Sun: are
• Three: tello'
• I/me: sengko'
• You: be'en

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