Gilbertese language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gilbertese Taetae ni kiribati
Spoken in:	Kiribati, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu
Total speakers:	102,000
Language family:	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central Eastern Eastern Oceanic Central-Eastern Oceanic Remote Oceanic Micronesian Micronesian Proper Gilbertese
Official status
Official language of:	Kiribati
Regulated by:	Kiribati Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`gil`
ISO 639-3:	`gil`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Gilbertese or Kiribati (sometimes Kiribatese, a mixture of both) is a language from the Austronesian family, part of the Oceanian branch and of the Nuclear Micronesian subbranch. It is a verb object subject language.

1 Name
2 Speakers
3 Linguistics and study
4 Useful phrases
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Name

The word Kiribati (1954) is just the modern rendition for "Gilberts", so most people do not care about translating this name in English, or not. Description of the language as Gilbertese or Kiribatese could be sometimes considered a relic of colonial days by some I-Kiribati (the people of Kiribati) (no reference for that last opinion).

The official description is taetae ni Kiribati, or 'the Kiribati language'.

The first complete description of this language (and the first time ever one prints kiribati in a print book) was in Dictionnaire gilbertin-français of Father Ernest Sabatier (981p, 1954), a Catholic priest. This Dictionnary has been translated into English later by Sister Olivia (with the help of South Pacific Commission.

[edit] Speakers

About 105,000 people speak Gilbertese, 98,000 of whom live in Kiribati, about 97.2% of the entire population. The others are the inhabitants of Nui (Tuvalu), Rabi Island (Fiji), Mili (Marshall Islands) and some other islands where I-Kiribati have been relocated (Solomon Islands -notably Choiseul Province- and Vanuatu) or emigrated (to New Zealand and Hawaii mainly).

Unlike many in the Pacific region, the Kiribati language is far from extinct, and just about all speakers use it daily. Only 30% of Kiribati speakers are fully bilingual with English, meaning that the language is in no current danger of being swallowed by the latter.

Fishermen, sailors, farmers and people involved in the production of copra comprise the majority of Kiribati speakers.

[edit] Linguistics and study

The Kiribati language has two main dialects: the Northern dialect and the Southern dialect. The main differences between them are in the pronunciation of some words. The islands of Butaritari and Makin also have their own dialect. It differs from the standard Kiribati in both vocabulary and pronunciation.

The Kiribati language is written in the Latin alphabet, and has been since the 1840s, when Hiram Bingham Jr, a missionary, first translated the Bible into Kiribati. Previously, the language was unwritten. The letter "s" does not occur in the language; "ti" is used instead.

One difficulty in translating the Bible was references to words such as "mountain", a geographical phenomenon unknown to the people of the islands of Kiribati at the time (only heard in the myths from Samoa). Bingham decided to use "hilly", which would be more easily understood. Such adjustments are common to all languages as "modern" things require creation of new words. The Gilbertese word for airplane is te wanikiba, "the canoe that flies".

Catholic missionaries would later arrive at the islands in 1888 and translate the Bible independently of Bingham, resulting in differences (Bingham wrote Jesus as "Iesu", while the Catholics wrote "Ietu") that would only be resolved in the 20th century (No 's' in the Kiribati alphabet). In 1954, Father Ernest Sabatier published the best English-Kiribati Dictionary: Dictionnaire Gilbertin-Français, 981p. (edited by South Pacific Commission in 1971).