() is a Polynesian language of the Ellicean group native to Tuvalu. It is more or less distantly related to all other Polynesian languages, such as Hawaiian, Māori, Tahitian, Samoan, Tokelauan and Tongan, and most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian Outliers in Micronesia and Northern and Central Melanesia. Tuvaluan has borrowed considerably from Samoan, the language of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The population of Tuvalu is approximately 10,645 people (2017 Mini Census), but there are estimated to be more than 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. In 2015, it was estimated that more than 3,500 Tuvaluans live in New Zealand, with about half that number born in New Zealand and 65 percent of the Tuvaluan community in New Zealand is able to speak Tuvaluan.

Name variations

Native speakers of Tuvaluan have various names for their language. In the language itself, it is often referred to as which translates to "the Tuvaluan language", or less formally as , meaning "our language". The dialects of Vaitupi and Funafuti are together known as a standard language called , meaning 'the common language'.

History

Like all other Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan descends from an ancestral language, which historical linguists refer to as "Proto-Polynesian", which was spoken perhaps about 2,000 years ago.

Language influences

Tuvaluan has had significant contact with Gilbertese, a Micronesian language; Samoan; and, increasingly, English. Gilbertese is spoken natively on Nui, and was important to Tuvaluans when its colonial administration was located in the Gilbert Islands. Samoan was introduced by missionaries, and has had the most impact on the language. During an intense period of colonization throughout Oceania in the nineteenth century, the Tuvaluan language was influenced by Samoan missionary-pastors. In an attempt to "Christianize" Tuvaluans, linguistic promotion of the Samoan language was evident in its use for official government acts and literacy instruction, as well as within the church, until being replaced by the Tuvaluan language in the 1950s.

English's influence has been limited, but is growing. Since gaining political independence in the 1970s, knowledge of the English language has gained importance for economic viability in Tuvalu. The ability to speak English is important for foreign communications and is often the language used in business and governmental settings.

Phonology

Vowels

The sound system of Tuvaluan consists of five vowels (). All vowels come in short and long forms, which are contrastive.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

|+Vowels

! rowspan="2" |

! colspan="2" |Short

! colspan="2" |Long

|-

!Front

!Back

!Front

!Back

|-

!Close

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!Mid

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|-

!Open

| colspan="2" |

| colspan="2" |

|}

There are no diphthongs so every vowel is sounded separately. Example: 'tomorrow' is pronounced as four separate syllables (ta-e-a-o).

Consonants

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

|+Consonants

!

!Labial

!Alveolar

!Velar

!Glottal

|-

!Nasal

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|-

!Plosive

|

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|

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|-

!Fricative

|  

|

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|-

!Lateral

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|}

The sound system of Tuvaluan consists of 10 or 11 consonants (), depending on the dialect. All consonants also come in short and geminated (long) forms, which are contrastive. The phoneme is written . All other sounds are represented with letters corresponding to their IPA symbols.

Phonotactics

Like most Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan syllables can either be V or CV. Both vowels and consonants can be long or short. There is no restriction on the placement of consonants, although they cannot be used at the end of words (as per the syllabic restrictions). Consonant clusters are not present in Tuvaluan.

Phonology of loanwords

None of the units in the Tuvaluan phonemic inventory are restricted to loanwords only. English is the only language from which loanwords are currently being borrowed – loans from Samoan and Gilbertese have already been adapted to fit Tuvaluan phonology. More established, conventional English borrowings are more likely to have been adapted to the standard phonology than those that have been adopted more recently.

Stress, gemination and lengthening

Stress is on the penultimate mora. Geminated consonants have the following main functions:

  • Pluralisation – e.g. 'sit' (singular) v 'sit' (plural)
  • Contraction of reduplicated syllable – e.g. 'good' in Northern dialects becomes in Southern dialects.
  • Contraction of the definite article – e.g. 'the man' becomes .
  • Differentiation of meaning between two words – e.g. 'overcooked' v 'plague'

Long vowels can be used to indicate pluralisation or a differentiation of meaning.

Word order

Like many Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan generally uses a VSO word order, with the verb often preceded by a verb marker. However, the word order is very flexible, and there are more exceptions to the VSO standard than sentences which conform to it. Besnier (p. 134) demonstrates that VSO is statistically the least frequent word order, and OVS is the most frequent word order, but still believes VSO is syntactically the default. Often if emphasis is to be placed on a first person pronoun or personal name, then it may precede the verb so that the sentence structure becomes SVO.

A Tuvaluan writer Afaese Manoa (born 1942) wrote the song "Tuvalu for the Almighty (Tuvaluan: )", adopted in 1978 as Tuvalu's national anthem.

Oral traditions

Although Tuvaluan does not have a longstanding written tradition, there is a considerable corpus of oral traditions that is also found in the music of Tuvalu, which includes material that pre-dates the influence of the Christian missionaries sent to Tuvalu by the London Missionary Society. The missionaries were predominantly from Samoa and they both suppressed oral traditions that they viewed as not being consistent with Christian teaching and they also influenced the development of the music of Tuvalu and the Tuvaluan language. Grammatical documentation of the Tuvaluan language indicates that various linguistic features have been preserved specifically within domains of verbal art. For example, the use of passives in Tuvaluan has become obsolete, except in folklore and ancient songs.

Academic study and major publications

Tuvaluan is one of the least documented languages of Polynesia. There has been limited work done on Tuvaluan from an English-speaking perspective. The first major work on Tuvaluan syntax was done by Donald Gilbert Kennedy, who published a Handbook on the language of the Tuvalu (Ellice) Islands in 1945. Niko Besnier has published the greatest amount of academic material on Tuvaluan – both descriptive and lexical. Besnier's description of Tuvaluan uses a phonemic orthography which differs from the ones most commonly used by Tuvaluans - which sometimes do not distinguish geminate consonants. Jackson's An Introduction to Tuvaluan is a useful guide to the language from a first contact point of view. The orthography used by most Tuvaluans is based on Samoan, and, according to Besnier, is not well-equipped to deal with important difference in vowel and consonant length which often perform special functions in the Tuvaluan language. Throughout this profile, Besnier's orthography is used as it best represents the linguistic characteristics under discussion.

Risk of endangerment

Isolation of minority-language communities promotes maintenance of the language. Due to global increases in temperature, rising sea levels threaten the islands of Tuvalu. Researchers acknowledge that within a "few years", the Pacific Ocean may engulf Tuvalu, swallowing not only the land, but its people and their language. The gradual resettlement of Tuvaluans in New Zealand means a loss of isolation for speakers from the larger society they are joining that situates them as a minority-language community. As more Tuvaluans continue to migrate to New Zealand and integrate themselves into the culture and society, relative isolation decreases, contributing to the language's endangerment. New Zealand holds an annual Tuvaluan Language Week.

Lack of isolation due to forced migration since 2002 has contributed to the endangerment of the Tuvaluan language and may further threaten it as more Tuvaluans are removed from their isolated linguistic communities.

References

Works cited

  • Reprinted:

Further reading

  • Vaiaso ote Gana, Tuvalu Language Week Education Resource 2016 (New Zealand Ministry for Pacific Peoples)
  • Formatted, easy-to-use web version of the Handbook on the Language of the Tuvalu Islands