Gilbertese language

Gilbertese
Taetae ni Kiribati
(or te taetae n aomata)
Spoken in  Kiribati
 Fiji
 Marshall Islands
 Nauru
 Solomon Islands
 Tuvalu
 Vanuatu
Native speakers 102,000  (date missing)
Language family
Official status
Official language in  Kiribati
Regulated by Kiribati Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-2 gil
ISO 639-3 gil
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Gilbertese or Kiribati (or sometimes Kiribatese) is a language from the Austronesian family, part of the Oceanian branch and of the Nuclear Micronesian subbranch. It has a basic verb–object–subject word order.

Contents

Name

The word Kiribati is just the modern rendition for "Gilberts", so the name is not usually translated into English. "Gilberts" comes from Captain Thomas Gilbert, who, along with Captain John Marshall, was one of the first Europeans to discover the Gilbert Islands in 1788. The official name of the language is te taetae ni Kiribati, or 'the Kiribati language'.

The first complete description of this language was in Dictionnaire gilbertin–français of Father Ernest Sabatier (981p, 1954), a Catholic priest. This Dictionary was later translated into English by Sister Olivia (with the help of South Pacific Commission).

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 most speakers use it daily. Only 30% of Kiribati speakers are fully bilingual with English.

Fishermen, sailors, farmers and people involved in the production of copra comprise the majority of Kiribati speakers.[1]

Countries by number of Gilbertese speakers

  1. Kiribati, 98,000
  2. Fiji, 5,300
  3. Nauru, 1,700
  4. Solomon Islands, 1,230
  5. Tuvalu, 870
  6. Vanuatu, 370

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.

Dialect listing

Phonology

Kiribati has 10 consonants and 10 vowels (5 short, five long)[2]

Consonants
Bilabial Apical Velar
plain velarized
Nasal m mˠ n ŋ
Plosive p pˠ t1 k
Fricative βˠ2
Flap ɾ3
  1. /t/ is lenited and assibilated to [s] before /i/
  2. The labiovelar fricative /βˠ/ may be a flap and an approximant, depending on the context.[3]
  3. /ɾ/ does not occur in the syllable coda[4]
Vowels
Front Back
Close1 i u
Mid e o
Open a
  1. Short /i/ and /u/ may become semivowels when followed by more sonorous vowels. /ie/ → [je] ('sail').[5] Kiribati also possesses syllabic nasals, although syllabic /n/ and /ŋ/ can be followed only by consonants that are homorganic.[3]

Quantity is distinctive for vowels and nasal consonants but not for the remaining sounds so that ana (third person singular article) contrasts with aana ('its underside') as well as anna ('dry land'). Other minimal pairs include:[3]

Short Long
te ben ('ripe coconut') te been ('pen')
ti (1st person subj marker) tii ('only')
on ('full') oon ('the/some turtles')
te atu ('bundle') te atuu ('head')
tuanga ('to tell someone') tuangnga ('to tell')

Written Kiribati

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 appear in the Kiribati alphabet, instead the combination "ti" is used for that sound.

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 (heard only 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 the creation of new words. For example, 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 be resolved only in the 20th century. In 1954, Father Ernest Sabatier published the bigger and more accurate French–Kiribati Dictionary (translated into English by Sister Olivia): Dictionnaire gilbertin–français, 981p. (edited by South Pacific Commission in 1971).

Kiribati Alphabet[6]
Letter A B E I K M N NG O R T U W
IPA /ä/ /p/ /e/ /i/ /k/ /m/ /n/ /ŋ/ /o/ /ɾ/ /t/ /u/ /βˠ/

Useful phrases

Notes

  1. ^ Kiribati
  2. ^ Blevins (1999:205–206)
  3. ^ a b c Blevins (1999:206)
  4. ^ Blevins (1999:207)
  5. ^ Blevins (1999:209)
  6. ^ Te taetae ni Kiribati – Kiribati Language Lessons – 10

Bibliography

External links

Sovereign states
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