Galela is the second most populous Papuan language spoken west of New Guinea, with some 80,000 speakers.
Its dialects are Kadai (41,000), Morotai (24,000), Kadina (10,000), and Sopi (4,000).
Galela is spoken on the eastern side of the northern tip of Halmahera island (in Galela district and in neighbouring villages in Tobelo and Loloda districts), on Morotai Island to the north, on the Bacan and Obi islands to the south of Halmahera, and in scattered settlements along the southwest coast.
Galela orthography largely follows Indonesian spelling conventions.
[2][3][4] The use of the pronominal prefixes is governed by semantic alignment: actor prefixes are used to index the S-argument of active intransitive verbs and the A-argument of transitive verbs, while undergoer prefixes index the S-argument of stative intransitive verbs and the P-argument of transitive verbs.