Kei is an Austronesian language spoken in a small region of the Moluccas, a province of Indonesia.
It has a population of around 140.000 people (source unknown), half of which lives in the only two cities, Tual and Langgur: respectively the Islamic and Christian capitals of the archipelago.
Saumlaki is a small island that belongs to the Tanimbar archipelago, of which its languages are not proven to be directly historically related to Kei.
Spellings that are used by scholars are Eiwav, Eivav, Ewaw, Ewab, Ewaf, Evav, Ewav and Evaf, for it is arguable whether the two consonants are phonemically distinct or not.
Ma Kang Yuen,[2] however, who studied the language in 154 villages (out of a bit more than 200) on Kei Kecil for several years in the first decade of the 21st century, claims to have never met a fluent speaker.
This was later confirmed by Yuri Villa Rikkers,[3] who visited the archipelago for a brief linguistic study in 2014.
Verbal inflection in Keiese is about agreement marking on the verb, based on the person and number of the subject of a sentence.
These subjects may be formed by nouns or by free personal pronouns that know a clusivity distinction as is common in Austronesian languages.
'First person plural (addressee excluded) ɑm1PL.EXbɪsbisaallm-1PL.EX-fɔklɔihanglarsailjaʔanuŋ1SG.POSSɑm bɪsbisa m- fɔklɔi lar jaʔanuŋ1PL.EX all 1PL.EX- hang sail 1SG.POSS'So we(excl.)
'First person plural (addressee included) hɛrawɪnYesterdayit1PL.INtə-1PL.IN-tavɑtstabɑm1PL.EXwaribyounger.sibling:1PL.POSShɛrawɪn it tə- tavɑt ɑm waribYesterday 1PL.IN 1PL.IN- stab 1PL.EX younger.sibling:1PL.POSS'Yesterday, we(incl.)