There are about a thousand speakers along the Indonesian border spoken in Green River Rural LLG, Sandaun Province.
This was foreshadowed in non-linguistic literature: a 1940 map shows the 'Enam' (Emem)–speaking area as including the Karkar territory in PNG, and the anthropologist Hanns Peter knew that the Karkar dialect continuum continued across the border into Emem territory.
[2] Cognates between Karkar-Yuri and the Pauwasi family (Tebi and Zorop languages) listed by Foley (2018):[3] Dialects are:[4][5] The Karkar inventory is as follows.
In some words, the plosive of a final NC is silent unless suffixed: onomp [ɔnɔm̚] 'my', onompono [ɔnɔmbɔnɔ] 'it's mine'.
Prenasalized and labialized consonant contrasts:[3]: 370 Plain and preglottalized sonorants contrasts, which only occur in word finals:[3]: 370 Pronouns listed by Ross (2005): Object forms take -an, sometimes replacing the -o: onan, amoan, man, yinan, námoan, yumoan.