Anneth speaking Huli

Huli is spoken by as many as 150,000 people in Papua New Guinea, the most linguistically diverse country in the world. This video was a gift by the International Red Cross. This video was recorded by the International Red Cross of Papua New Guinea. Huli is spoken by as many as 150,000 people, primarily in Papua New Guinea's highland Hela Province. According to oral tradition, the Huli people have lived in their ancestral homeland for at least 1,000 years; and have maintained a self-identifying Huli culture since then. They are known internationally for the "Huli wigmen", men who sculpt, paint, and elaborately bejewel their hair as part of their transition to adulthood. The Huli language is an Engan language with few linguistic relatives: some linguists have argued that the Engan languages constitute a branch of the broad Trans-New Guinea language family, but most argue that the Engan languages form an isolated dialect continuum. This wouldn't be surprising: with nearly 800 classified languages (and perhaps many more), Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world as measured by Indigenous languages. This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. To download a copy, please contact hello@wikitongues.org.