ABSTRACT
Nias is spoken on the island of Nias, one of a group of islands known as the Barrier Islands, which stretch along the west coast of Sumatra. It is also spoken on the Batu Islands to the south of the main island of Nias. The other large islands in the Barrier chain are Simeuluë to the north of Nias, and Siberut, Sipora, the Pagai Islands and Enggano to the south. The languages Sichule and Simeuluë are spoken on the island of Simeuluë. Sichule is clearly very closely related to Nias, as shown by Kähler (1955, 1963). Simeuluë is regarded by Kähler (1963) as Western Malayo-Polynesian but not closely related to Nias. Based on evidence from phonetic, semantic and lexical innovations, Nothofer (1986) claims that Simeuluë and Sichule, along with the Mentawai language, spoken on Siberut, Sipora and the Pagai Islands, and Enggano, the language spoken on Enggano Island, about 400 km to the south of the other islands, form a genetic subgroup with the Batak languages of Northern Sumatra (see also Nothofer 1994).
