| Tuvaluan te ggana Tuvalu |
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| Spoken in: | Tuvalu, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand | |
| Total speakers: | 10,670 in Tuvalu. Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian Island nation located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Fiji (Matanitu ko Viti फ़िजी officially the Republic of the Fiji Islands (Matanitu Tu-Vaka-i-koya ko Viti फ़िजी द्वीप समूह गणराज्य Kiribati or ( kirr-i-bas or KEE-ree-buhss ˈkiɾibas in Gilbertese) officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an Island nation located in Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru, is an Island nation in the Micronesian South Pacific. New Zealand is an Island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island 13,051 total. | |
| Language family: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central Eastern Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Central-Eastern Oceanic Remote Oceanic Central Pacific East Fijian-Polynesian Polynesian Nuclear Samoic Ellicean Tuvaluan |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Tuvalu | |
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | tvl | |
| ISO 639-3: | tvl | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers The family of Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages is a branch of the Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages. The family of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (EMP languages is a subgroup of the Central Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages. The Oceanic languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, containing approximately 450 languages The over 200 Central-Eastern Oceanic languages form a branch of the Oceanic Language family within the Austronesian languages. The family of Remote Oceanic languages is a subgroup of the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages. The Polynesian languages are a Language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. Nuclear Polynesian refers to those languages comprising the Samoic and the Eastern Polynesian branches of the Polynesian group of Austronesian The Samoic languages are one of the primary classes of Polynesian languages, encompassing the Polynesian languages of Samoa, Tuvalu, American List of Ellicean languages Tuvaluan ( Tuvalu) Kapingamarangi ( Kapingamarangi in the Federated States of Micronesia This is a list of bodies that regulate Standard languages Natural languages Auxiliary languages Interlingua The auxiliary language ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's | ||
Tuvaluan is a Nuclear Polynesian language of the Ellicean group spoken in Tuvalu. Nuclear Polynesian refers to those languages comprising the Samoic and the Eastern Polynesian branches of the Polynesian group of Austronesian List of Ellicean languages Tuvaluan ( Tuvalu) Kapingamarangi ( Kapingamarangi in the Federated States of Micronesia Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian Island nation located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and It is more or less distantly related to all other Polynesian languages, such as Hawaiian, Māori, Tahitian, Samoan, and Tongan, and most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian Outliers in Micronesia and Northern and Central Melanesia. The Hawaiian language (Hawaiian ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i) is an Austronesian language that takes its name from Hawai'i, the largest island in the tropical Tahitian, a Tahitic language, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia (along with French) The Sāmoan or Samoan language is the traditional language of Samoa and American Samoa and is an official language &mdash alongside English Tongan ( lea fakatonga) is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. Melanesia (from Greek: μέλας black, νῆσος island) means "islands of the black-skinned people" Tuvaluan has borrowed considerably from Samoan, the language of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide.
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History
Like all other Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan descends from an ancestral language, which historical linguists refer to as "Proto-Polynesian," which was spoken around 3000 years ago. Proto-Polynesian is the hypothetical Proto-language, from which all modern Polynesian languages descend
Sound System
The sound system of Tuvaluan consists of five vowels (i, e, a, o, u) and 10 or 11 consonants (p, t, k, m, n, g, f, v, s, h, l), depending on the dialect. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal All sounds, including consonants, come in short and long forms, which are contrastive.
Grammar
There are four possible articles in Tuvaluan: definite singular te, indefinite singular se or he (depending on the dialect), definite plural zero form, and indefinite plural ne or ni (depending on the dialect). The verb can be either clause-initial or clause-medial, and the order of subject, direct object, and indirect object is relatively free. The adjective generally follows the noun, the possessor follows the possessed. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the
Dialects
Tuvaluan is divided into two groups of dialects, Northern Tuvaluan, comprising dialects spoken on the islands of Nanumea, Nanumaga, and Niutao (as well as Niulakita), and Southern Tuvaluan, comprising dialects spoken on the islands of Funafuti, Vaitupu, Nukufetau and Nukulaelae. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος dialektos) is a variety of a Language that is characteristic of a particular group of Geography Nanumea is the northwesternmost island in the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu, a group of nine coral atolls and islands spread over about four hundred Nanumaga or Nanumanga is an island an atoll or a district of the Oceanian island nation of Tuvalu. Niutao is an island in the northern part of Tuvalu. It is one of the nine districts (atolls of Tuvalu and one of the three who consist of only one island not counting Niulakita is the southernmost island atoll or district of Tuvalu, and the name of the only village on this island Funafuti is the Capital of the small island nation of Tuvalu. Vaitupu is an island atoll or district of the Pacific nation of Tuvalu. This article is about an atoll in Tuvalu For the islet with a similar name in Wallis and Futuna see Nukufetao. Nukulaelae is one of the six atolls of Tuvalu, and has a population (2002 census of 393 All dialects are mutually intelligible, and differ in terms of phonology, morphology, and lexicon. The Funafuti-Vaitupu dialects (which are very close to one another) is the de-facto national language, although speakers of the Northern dialects often use their own dialect in public contexts outside of their own communities. Funafuti is the Capital of the small island nation of Tuvalu. Vaitupu is an island atoll or district of the Pacific nation of Tuvalu. The inhabitants of one island of Tuvalu, Nui, speak a dialect of Gilbertese, a Micronesian language only very distantly related to Tuvaluan. Nui is an Atoll and one of nine districts of the Pacific Ocean state of Tuvalu. Gilbertese or Kiribati (or sometimes Kiribatese, a mixture of both is a Language from the Austronesian family, part of the
Tuvaluan is mutually intelligible with Tokelauan, spoken by the approximately 1,700 inhabitants of the three atolls of Tokelau and on Swains Island, as well as the several thousand Tokelauan migrants living in New Zealand. Tokelauan is an Austronesian language. Speakers It is spoken by about 1700 people on the atolls of Tokelau, and by the few inhabitants of Tokelau (ˈtoʊkəlaʊ is a territory of New Zealand that consists of three tropical coral Atolls in the South Pacific Ocean. Swains Island is an Atoll in the Tokelau chain the most northwesterly island administered by American Samoa.
Literature
The Bible was translated into Tuvaluan in 1987. Apart from this, there are very few Tuvaluan language books available. There is, however, a newspaper published in Tuvaluan, called Sikuleo o Tuvalu.
The writer Afaese Manoa (1942-) wrote the song Tuvalu mo te Atua, adopted in 1978 as the country's national anthem. Afaese Manoa ( 1942 - is a Tuvaluan writer and musician National Anthem of Tuvalu Manoa is the author of words and music Year 1942 ( MCMXLII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (the link will display the full 1942 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. "Tuvalu for the Almighty" (Tuvalu mo te Atua is the National anthem of Tuvalu. Year 1978 ( MCMLXXVIII) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1978 Gregorian calendar)
Oral traditions
Although Tuvaluan does not have a longstanding written tradition, there is a considerable corpus of oral traditions. The legend of the Caves of Nanumanga has attracted international attention. In 1986, off the northern shore of Nanumanga island in western Polynesia's Tuvalu group two Scuba divers found an underwater cave more than 40 metres down
External links
- Niko Besnier, 2000, Tuvaluan: A Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific, Routledge
- Niko Besnier, 1995, Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll, Cambridge University Press
- Ethnologue
- Donald Gilbert Kennedy, 1945 Tuvaluan Grammar
- http://www.ling.su.se/pollinet/facts/tok.html
- Caves of Nanumanga legend: http://www.tuvaluislands.com/history-caves.htm
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