ניאס

Nias (Li Niha, "language of Niha [the people]") is the principal Austronesian language of Nias Island, an offshore island in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of North Sumatra, Indonesia. The Nias people are famous for their megalithic stone-jumping warrior culture (hombo batu — leaping over stone columns), traditional Omo Hada dome-shaped chiefly houses, and the Nias festival of Faulokho. Linguistically, Nias has Sundic Austronesian features: voice/focus alternations, classifier-like noun particles, and a rich pronoun system. Two main dialect groups exist: Northern Nias (Niha Bawöra) and Southern Nias (Niha Maenamölö), with Brown's 2001 grammar focused on Southern.