In talking about the richness of West Papuan culture, the richness of language in West Papua cannot be excluded. Based on the latest data sourced from the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia, West Papua has 326 languages out of a total of 718 regional languages in the Republic of Indonesia. Where every language in West Papua has grammatical or grammatical properties that vary in each language.

This language difference can be seen from the sound system, phrase structure, word structure, meaning structure, personal pronouns, sentence structure to pragmatic diversity in language use. Historically, this language diversity was influenced by language contact that occurred in the West Papua region many years ago.

West Papua has 2 major groups of language families which are mother tongues, including tribal languages in West Papua. The two language groups are the Austronesian group and the non-Austronesian group. If the languages in the Austronesian group are mostly used on the north coast and surrounding islands, starting from the coast of Jayapura, Sarmi and Cenderawasih Bay, as well as the Raja Ampat Islands. Thus non-Austronesian languages are mostly spoken on the Big Island of New Guinea.

Even so, it’s a shame that the wealth of languages owned by the land of Papua is not supported by speakers who are currently decreasing in number. This of course can lead to the extinction of these languages due to the loss of the number of speakers. Therefore, the hope is that the languages in Papua can continue to be preserved and that there will be more and more speakers so they don’t become extinct.