Tamambo language
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| Tamambo | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Vanuatu | |
| Region: | Malo Island, Espiritu Santo | |
| Total speakers: | 3,000 | |
| Language family: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central Eastern Eastern Oceanic Central-Eastern Remote Oceanic North and Central Northeast West Santo Tamambo |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | map | |
| ISO 639-3: | mla | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Tamambo is an Oceanic language spoken by at least 3,000 people on Malo and nearby islands in Vanuatu.
Contents |
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Vowels
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i | u |
| Mid | e | o |
| Low | a |
/i u/ become [j w] respectively when unstressed and before another vowel. /o/ may also become [w] for some speakers.
[edit] Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Labialized | |||||
| Stop | Voiceless | t | ᶮɟ | k | ||
| Prenasalized | ᵐb | ᵐbʷ | ⁿd | |||
| Nasal | m | mʷ | n | ŋ | ||
| Fricative | Voiceless | β | s | x | ||
| Voiced | βʷ | |||||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
The prenasalilzed postalveolar stop /ᶮɟ/ is often affricated and voiceless, i.e. [ⁿtʃ].
Younger speakers often realize /β/ as [f] initially and [v] medially, while /βʷ/ is often replaced by [w].
/x/ is usually realized as [x] initially, but some speakers use [h]. Medially, it may be pronounced as any of [x ɣ h ɦ ɡ].
[edit] Writing system
Few speakers of Tamambo are literate, and there is no standard orthography. Spelling conventions used include:
| Phoneme | Representation |
|---|---|
| /ᵐb/ | B initially, mb medially. |
| /ᵐbʷ/ | Bu or bw initially, mbu or mbw medially. |
| /x/ | C or h. |
| /ⁿd/ | D initially, nd medially. |
| /ᶮɟ/ | J initially, nj medially. |
| /k/ | K. |
| /l/ | L. |
| /m/ | M. |
| /mʷ/ | Mu or mw. |
| /n/ | N. |
| /ŋ/ | Ng. |
| /r/ | R. |
| /s/ | S. |
| /t/ | T. |
| /β/ | V. |
| /βʷ/ | Vu or w. |
[edit] References
- Jauncey, Dorothy G. (1997). A Grammar of Tamambo, the Language of Western Malo, Vanuatu, Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra.
- Jauncey, Dorothy G. (2002). in Lynch, J., Ross, M. & Crowley, T.: The Oceanic Languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 608–625.
- Riehl, Anastasia K.; Jauncey, Dorothy (2005). "Illustrations of the IPA: Tamambo". Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2): 255–259. DOI:10.1017/S0025100305002197.
[edit] External links
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