Talk:Gilbertese language

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Please: do not make confusion : I-Kiribati is the people and kiribati (or more exactly te taetae ni kiribati) the name of the Gilbertese language. --Enzino 19:42, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Poll

Move this article to Kiribati language? --Revolución hablar ver 03:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Move Ethnologue calls it Kiribati [1]. Also, the vast majority of the people in Kiribati call it Kiribati , not Gilbertese and regard it as a relic of colonialism. --Revolución hablar ver 03:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Don't move. Ethnologue is not the Bible. kiribati is the local name (the complete is te taetae ni kiribati) but Gilbertese is the historical name. You find it in Stevenson. And it's not a relic of colonialism, because Gilberts=Kiribati (Gilbertese rendition of Gilberts is Kiribati). Gilbertese is as English as French (and not français), German (and not Deutsch) or Japanese (and not Nihongo). Please respect English language and history.
  • Don't move. Practically for the same reasons as the one before me. "Gilbertese" is indeed the most common name for the language, although the people themselves might call their language differently. --N-true 14:14, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
  • No vote. But the comment is correct that Kiribati is simply the local pronunciation of the English name Gilberts. The requested move is a little like asking that Japanese language be moved to Zyapaniizu rangezi, which is how the Japanese commonly pronounce the English phrase. (I presume that [t] and [s] are allophones in Gilbertese as they are in several other languages of the Pacific, and that Bingham recognized this in his orthography.) kwami 11:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted comment

I deleted the comment

Bingham had only a typewriter with a broken "S" so it does not occur in the language and "ti" is used for that sound instead.

This sounds like an urban myth (well, without the urban part, maybe!). If s had been missing, Bingham would simply have written it in by hand. Later in the article, it says that Bingham wrote Jesus as Iesu, and it was only later respelled Ietu to get rid of the s, which contradicts the broken-typewriter tale. kwami 11:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

More simple: no typewriter in the luggage of Bingham, and of course, some S like in Iesu proves it...Enzino 19:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] s in the language

does kiribati lack an s sound altogether? or is it just that the letter s isn't used and ti is used in place of it? if that's the case, does anyone know the reason why?

There is an [s] in Gilbertese, of course. It's just written "t" (ti is [si] and tu sometimes [su], sometimes [tu])…Enzino 20:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who was Gilbert?

--Greasysteve13 06:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Captain Thomas Gilbert of the Charlotte, which sailed through in 1788. --Henrygb 16:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] i-Kiribati

This is the name of the people. The alternate name for the language is "Kiribati", not "i-Kiribati". The article should be consistent throughout. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 16:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This "no letter 's'" business

Can someone with a little expertise shed some light on this? Why would the written language lack an 's', when the language is written with the Roman alphabet? Was there some curious motivation for writing "ti" instead of 's'? It would be nice to know... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.155.189.71 (talk) 23:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Written Kiribati

A correction is needed in this section where it states: "...published the best English-Kiribati Dictionary: Dictionnaire Gilbertin-Français". Was this intended to be a sarcastic comment or was it just a slip? I don't know, but obviously this was a French-Kiribati dictionary and thus could not be termed the best English-Kiribati dictionary. Perhaps the best Western language Kiribati dictionary? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.56.160.208 (talk) 02:10, 21 October 2007 (UTC)