ABSTRACT
Kambera is spoken by approximately 150,000 speakers in the eastern region of the island of Sumba (province Nusa Tenggara Timur) in Eastern Indonesia. It is classified as belonging to the Central-Malayo-Polynesian subgroup (see Blust 1993). Several other indigenous languages (or ‘dialects’, Onvlee 1984) are spoken on Sumba, including Weyewa (75,000), Kodi (40,000), Lamboya (15,000), Wanukaka (10,000), Anakalang (14,000) and Mamboru (16,000) (Wurm 1994). Of those, Weyewa and Kodi in particular appear to be unintelligible to speakers of Kambera. For that reason, at least the latter three varieties may be considered separate languages rather than dialects. It is as yet unclear whether the remaining varieties should be classified as dialects or languages.
