Tuvaluan language
Encyclopedia
Tuvaluan is a Polynesian language
of or closely related to the Ellicean group
spoken in Tuvalu
. It is more or less distantly related to all other Polynesian languages, such as Hawaiian
, Maori
, Tahitian
, Samoan
, 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. There are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide.
", which was spoken perhaps about 3000 years ago.
, 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. English’s influence has been limited, but is growing.
s (/i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/) and 10 or 11 consonant
s (/p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /ɸ/, /β/, /s/, /h/, /l/), depending on the dialect. All sounds, including consonants, come in short and long forms, which are contrastive. /h/ is only used in limited circumstances in the Nanumea, Nanumaga and Nukulaelae dialect. The phonemes /ŋ/, /ɸ/, and /β/ are written ⟨g⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨v⟩, respectively. All other sounds are represented with letters corresponding to their IPA symbols. Like most Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan syllables can either be V or CV. 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 available in Tuvaluan. There are no diphthong
s so every vowel is sounded separately. Example: taeao ‘tomorrow’ is pronounced as almost four separate syllables (ta-e-a-o).
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. nofo ('sit' singular) v nnofo ('sit' plural)
- Contraction of reduplicated syllable – e.g. lelei ('good') in Northern dialects becomes llei in Southern dialects.
- Contraction of the definite article te – e.g. te tagata ('the man') becomes ttagata.
- Differentiation of meaning between two words – e.g. mmala ('overcooked') v mala ('plague')
Vowels can be used to indicate pluralisation or a differentiation of meaning.
Reduplication is one of the most common morphological devices in Tuvalu, and works in a wide variety of ways. Firstly, it operates on verbs and adjectives. Jackson lists six ways it can function:
1. Intensification of action:
e.g. filemu – ‘peaceful, quiet’ : fifilemu – ‘to be very peaceful, quiet’
2. Diminished action:
e.g. fakalogo – ‘to listen carefully, obey’ : fakalogologo – ‘to listen casually’
3. Continued, repeated action:
e.g. tue – ‘to shake, dust off’ : tuetue – ‘to shake, dust off repeatedly’
4. A more widely distributed activity:
e.g. masae – ‘to be ripped, torn’ : masaesae – ‘ripped, torn in many places’
5. Pluralisation:
e.g. maavae – ‘separated, divided’ : mavaevae – ‘divided into many parts’
6. Change of meaning:
e.g. fakaoso – ‘to provoke’ : fakaosooso – ‘to tempt’
The prefix faka- is another interesting aspect of Tuvaluan. It operates as a ‘causative’ – to make a verb more ‘active’, or shapes an adjective ‘in the manner of’. Jackson describes ‘faka-‘ as the most important prefix in Tuvaluan’.
Examples:
Adjectives:
llei – ‘good’ : fakallei – ‘to make good, better, reconcile’
aogaa – ‘useful’ : fakaaogaa – ‘to use’
Verbs:
tele – ‘run, operate’ : fakatele – ‘to operate, to run’
fua – ‘to produce’ : fakafua – ‘to make something produce’
Tuvaluan relies heavily on the use of verbs. There are many ‘state of being’ words which are verbs in Tuvaluan, which would be classified as adjectives in English. Generally, verbs can be identified by the tense marker which precedes them (usually immediately, but occasionally separated by adverbs). Verbs do not change form because of tense, and only occasionally undergo germination in the plural. Passive and reciprocal verbs undergo some changes by the use of affixes, but these forms are used infrequently and usually apply to loan words from Samoan.
The distinction between verb and adjective is often only indicated by the use of verb/tense markers and the position of the word in the sentence. Adjectives always follow the noun they reference. Adjectives regularly change in the plural form (by gemination) where nouns do not. Many adjectives can become abstract nouns by adding the definite article te, or a pronoun, before the adjective. This is similar to English adjectives adding –ness to an adjective to form a noun.
Adverbs usually follow the verb they apply to, although there are some notable exceptions to this rule.
s in Tuvaluan: definite singular te, indefinite singular se or he (depending on the dialect), definite plural zero form, and indefinite plural ne or ni (depending on the dialect).Indefinite and definite concepts are applied differently in Tuvaluan from English. The singular definite te refers to something or someone that the speaker and the audience know, or have already mentioned – as opposed to the indefinite, which is not specifically known or has not been mentioned. The Tuvaluan word for ‘that’ or ‘this’ (in its variations derivations) is often used to indicate a more definite reference.
Possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are composed of three elements: a full or reduced article; designation of o (inalienable
) or a (alienable) for the possession; an additional suffix related to personal pronoun. Whether an object is designated alienable (a class) or inalienable (o class) depends on the class of object. Inalienable generally includes body parts, health, origin, objects acquired through inheritance, personal things in close contact to the body, emotions and sensations, and ‘traditional’ possession (e.g. canoes, axes, spears, lamps).
s, Northern Tuvaluan, comprising dialects spoken on the islands of Nanumea
, Nanumaga, and Niutao
and Southern Tuvaluan, comprising dialects spoken on the islands of Funafuti
, Vaitupu
, Nukufetau
and Nukulaelae
. All dialects are mutually intelligible, and differ in terms of phonology, morphology, and lexicon. The Funafuti
-Vaitupu
dialects (which are very close to one another) is the de-facto national language, although speakers of the Northern dialects often use their own dialect in public contexts outside of their own communities. The inhabitants of one island of Tuvalu, Nui, speak a dialect of Gilbertese, a Micronesian language only very distantly related to Tuvaluan.
Tuvaluan is mutually intelligible with Tokelauan, spoken by the approximately 1,700 inhabitants of the three atolls of Tokelau
and on Swains Island
, as well as the several thousand Tokelauan migrants living in New Zealand.
The writer Afaese Manoa
(1942-) wrote the song Tuvalu mo te Atua
, adopted in 1978 as the country's national anthem.
has attracted international attention.
Polynesian languages
The Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family, belonging to the Oceanic branch of that family. They fall into two branches: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian. Polynesians share many cultural traits...
of or closely related to the Ellicean group
Ellicean languages
The Ellicean or Ellicean–Outlier languages are a group languages spoken in Polynesian outliers in Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, and the northern Solomon Islands, as well as the languages of Tuvalu...
spoken in Tuvalu
Tuvalu
Tuvalu , formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa and Fiji. It comprises four reef islands and five true atolls...
. It is more or less distantly related to all other Polynesian languages, such as Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
, Maori
Maori language
Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
, Tahitian
Tahitian language
Tahitian is an indigenous language spoken mainly in the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to the other indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Mangarevan, and Austral Islands languages...
, Samoan
Samoan language
Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
, and Tongan
Tongan language
Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 200,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO language.-Related languages:...
, and most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian Outliers in Micronesia and Northern and Central Melanesia
Melanesia
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...
. Tuvaluan has borrowed considerably from Samoan, the language of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide.
History
Like all other Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan descends from an ancestral language, which historical linguists refer to as "Proto-PolynesianProto-Polynesian language
Proto-Polynesian, , is the hypothetical proto-language from which all the modern Polynesian languages descend. Historical linguists have reconstructed the language using the comparative method, in much the same manner as with Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afro-Asiatic...
", which was spoken perhaps about 3000 years ago.
Language influences
Tuvaluan has had significant contact with GilberteseGilbertese language
-External links:**** with Gilbertese – English Translations from – The Rosetta Edition**...
, a Micronesian language
Micronesian languages
The family of Micronesian languages is a branch of the Oceanic languages. It consists of twenty languages, the nineteen Micronesian Proper languages and Nauruan...
; Samoan
Samoan language
Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
; and, increasingly, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Gilbertese is spoken natively on Nui, and was important to Tuvaluans when its colonial administration was located in the Gilbert Islands
Gilbert Islands
The Gilbert Islands are a chain of sixteen atolls and coral islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are the main part of Republic of Kiribati and include Tarawa, the site of the country's capital and residence of almost half of the population.-Geography:The atolls and islands of the Gilbert Islands...
. Samoan was introduced by missionaries, and has had the most impact on the language. English’s influence has been limited, but is growing.
Phonology
The sound system of Tuvaluan consists of five vowelVowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s (/i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/) and 10 or 11 consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s (/p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /ɸ/, /β/, /s/, /h/, /l/), depending on the dialect. All sounds, including consonants, come in short and long forms, which are contrastive. /h/ is only used in limited circumstances in the Nanumea, Nanumaga and Nukulaelae dialect. The phonemes /ŋ/, /ɸ/, and /β/ are written ⟨g⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨v⟩, respectively. All other sounds are represented with letters corresponding to their IPA symbols. Like most Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan syllables can either be V or CV. 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 available in Tuvaluan. There are no diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s so every vowel is sounded separately. Example: taeao ‘tomorrow’ is pronounced as almost four separate syllables (ta-e-a-o).
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
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
. Geminated
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
consonants have the following main functions:
- Pluralisation – e.g. nofo ('sit' singular) v nnofo ('sit' plural)
- Contraction of reduplicated syllable – e.g. lelei ('good') in Northern dialects becomes llei in Southern dialects.
- Contraction of the definite article te – e.g. te tagata ('the man') becomes ttagata.
- Differentiation of meaning between two words – e.g. mmala ('overcooked') v mala ('plague')
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, word order is somewhat flexible, and there are some exceptions to the VSO standard. 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.Morphology
In Tuvaluan, there is virtually no inflectional or derivational morphology – Tuvaluan uses markers to indicated case, tense, plurality, etc. The table below, adapted from Jackson's An Introduction to Tuvaluan, outlines the main markers, although there are also negative and imperative derivatives. Vowel gemination can also sometimes illustrate semantic change.| Marker | Function/meaning |
|---|---|
| e | present tense marker |
| ka | future tense marker |
| kai | 'ever' |
| ke | 1. 'should (imperative) 2. 'and', 'so that...' |
| ke na | imperative (polite) |
| ko | present perfect tense marker |
| koi | 'still' (continuing action) |
| ko too | 'too |
| o | 'and', 'to' (connector between verbs) |
| ma | 'lest, if something should' |
| mana | 'lest it should happen' |
| moi | 'if only' |
| ne | past tense marker |
| (no marker) | imperative command |
Reduplication is one of the most common morphological devices in Tuvalu, and works in a wide variety of ways. Firstly, it operates on verbs and adjectives. Jackson lists six ways it can function:
1. Intensification of action:
e.g. filemu – ‘peaceful, quiet’ : fifilemu – ‘to be very peaceful, quiet’
2. Diminished action:
e.g. fakalogo – ‘to listen carefully, obey’ : fakalogologo – ‘to listen casually’
3. Continued, repeated action:
e.g. tue – ‘to shake, dust off’ : tuetue – ‘to shake, dust off repeatedly’
4. A more widely distributed activity:
e.g. masae – ‘to be ripped, torn’ : masaesae – ‘ripped, torn in many places’
5. Pluralisation:
e.g. maavae – ‘separated, divided’ : mavaevae – ‘divided into many parts’
6. Change of meaning:
e.g. fakaoso – ‘to provoke’ : fakaosooso – ‘to tempt’
The prefix faka- is another interesting aspect of Tuvaluan. It operates as a ‘causative’ – to make a verb more ‘active’, or shapes an adjective ‘in the manner of’. Jackson describes ‘faka-‘ as the most important prefix in Tuvaluan’.
Examples:
Adjectives:
llei – ‘good’ : fakallei – ‘to make good, better, reconcile’
aogaa – ‘useful’ : fakaaogaa – ‘to use’
Verbs:
tele – ‘run, operate’ : fakatele – ‘to operate, to run’
fua – ‘to produce’ : fakafua – ‘to make something produce’
Verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs
Tuvaluan tends to favour using verbs over nouns. Nouns can be formed from many verbs by adding the suffix –ga. In the Southern dialect, the addition of –ga lengthens the final vowel of the verb root of the new noun. Many nouns can also be used as verbs.Tuvaluan relies heavily on the use of verbs. There are many ‘state of being’ words which are verbs in Tuvaluan, which would be classified as adjectives in English. Generally, verbs can be identified by the tense marker which precedes them (usually immediately, but occasionally separated by adverbs). Verbs do not change form because of tense, and only occasionally undergo germination in the plural. Passive and reciprocal verbs undergo some changes by the use of affixes, but these forms are used infrequently and usually apply to loan words from Samoan.
The distinction between verb and adjective is often only indicated by the use of verb/tense markers and the position of the word in the sentence. Adjectives always follow the noun they reference. Adjectives regularly change in the plural form (by gemination) where nouns do not. Many adjectives can become abstract nouns by adding the definite article te, or a pronoun, before the adjective. This is similar to English adjectives adding –ness to an adjective to form a noun.
Adverbs usually follow the verb they apply to, although there are some notable exceptions to this rule.
Articles
There are four possible articleArticle (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
s in Tuvaluan: definite singular te, indefinite singular se or he (depending on the dialect), definite plural zero form, and indefinite plural ne or ni (depending on the dialect).Indefinite and definite concepts are applied differently in Tuvaluan from English. The singular definite te refers to something or someone that the speaker and the audience know, or have already mentioned – as opposed to the indefinite, which is not specifically known or has not been mentioned. The Tuvaluan word for ‘that’ or ‘this’ (in its variations derivations) is often used to indicate a more definite reference.
Pronouns
Like many other Polynesian languages, the Tuvaluan pronoun system distinguishes between exclusive and inclusive, and singular, dual and plural forms (see table below). However, it does not distinguish between gender, instead relying on contextual references to the involved persons or things (when it is necessary to identify ‘it’). This often involves the use of tangata (‘male’) or fafine (‘female’) as an adjective or affix to illustrate information about gender.| Singular | Dual | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First person inclusive | au(aku) | taaua | taatou |
| First person exclusive | maaua | maatou | |
| Second person | koe | koulua | koulou |
| Third person | a ia, ia | laaua | laatou |
Possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are composed of three elements: a full or reduced article; designation of o (inalienable
Alienability (linguistics)
Alienability as a grammatical concept in some languages, such as Tlingit, Rama, or Paama, related to the concept of possession.A noun is called inalienable noun, if it must always have a possessed relationship with another noun...
) or a (alienable) for the possession; an additional suffix related to personal pronoun. Whether an object is designated alienable (a class) or inalienable (o class) depends on the class of object. Inalienable generally includes body parts, health, origin, objects acquired through inheritance, personal things in close contact to the body, emotions and sensations, and ‘traditional’ possession (e.g. canoes, axes, spears, lamps).
Dialects
Tuvaluan is divided into two groups of dialectDialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s, Northern Tuvaluan, comprising dialects spoken on the islands of Nanumea
Nanumea
Nanumea is the northwesternmost atoll in the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu, a group of nine coral atolls and islands spread over about four hundred miles of Pacific Ocean just south of the equator and west of the International Date Line.-Geography:...
, Nanumaga, and Niutao
Niutao
Niutao is a reef island in the northern part of Tuvalu. It is one of the nine districts of Tuvalu, and one of the three who consist of only one island, not counting the three islets inside the closed lagoon. Niutao has a population of 663 .-Geography:There are two lakes , which are brackish to...
and Southern Tuvaluan, comprising dialects spoken on the islands of Funafuti
Funafuti
Funafuti is an atoll that forms the capital of the island nation of Tuvalu. It has a population of 4,492 , making it the most populated atoll in the country. It is a narrow sweep of land between 20 and 400 metres wide, encircling a large lagoon 18 km long and 14 km wide, with a surface of...
, Vaitupu
Vaitupu
Vaitupu is an atoll, which is part of the nation of Tuvalu.Vaitupu, the largest atoll of Tuvalu is located at 7.48 degrees south and 178.83 degrees west. The capital is Asau.-History:...
, Nukufetau
Nukufetau
Nukufetau is an atoll that is part of the nation of Tuvalu. The atoll was claimed by the US under the Guano Islands Act some time in the 19th century and was ceded in a treaty of friendship concluded in 1979 and coming into force in 1983...
and Nukulaelae
Nukulaelae
Nukulaelae is an atoll that is part of the nation of Tuvalu, and has a population of 393. It has the form of an oval and consists of at least 15 islets...
. All dialects are mutually intelligible, and differ in terms of phonology, morphology, and lexicon. The Funafuti
Funafuti
Funafuti is an atoll that forms the capital of the island nation of Tuvalu. It has a population of 4,492 , making it the most populated atoll in the country. It is a narrow sweep of land between 20 and 400 metres wide, encircling a large lagoon 18 km long and 14 km wide, with a surface of...
-Vaitupu
Vaitupu
Vaitupu is an atoll, which is part of the nation of Tuvalu.Vaitupu, the largest atoll of Tuvalu is located at 7.48 degrees south and 178.83 degrees west. The capital is Asau.-History:...
dialects (which are very close to one another) is the de-facto national language, although speakers of the Northern dialects often use their own dialect in public contexts outside of their own communities. The inhabitants of one island of Tuvalu, Nui, speak a dialect of Gilbertese, a Micronesian language only very distantly related to Tuvaluan.
Tuvaluan is mutually intelligible with Tokelauan, spoken by the approximately 1,700 inhabitants of the three atolls of Tokelau
Tokelau
Tokelau is a territory of New Zealand in the South Pacific Ocean that consists of three tropical coral atolls with a combined land area of 10 km2 and a population of approximately 1,400...
and on Swains Island
Swains Island
Swains Island is an atoll in the Tokelau chain. Culturally a part of Tokelau, it is an unincorporated unorganized territory of the United States administered by American Samoa. Swains Island has also been known at various times as Olosenga Island, Olohega Island, Quiros Island, Gente Hermosa...
, as well as the several thousand Tokelauan migrants living in New Zealand.
Literature
The Bible was translated into Tuvaluan in 1987. The Jehovah's Witness organization Watchtower publishes its Watchtower Magazine on a monthly basis in Tuvaluan. Apart from this, there are very few Tuvaluan language books available. There is, however, a newspaper published in Tuvaluan, called Sikuleo o Tuvalu.The writer Afaese Manoa
Afaese Manoa
Afaese Manoa is a Tuvaluan writer and musician.-National Anthem of Tuvalu:Manoa is the author of words and music to an anthem, 'Tuvalu mo te Atua' , in the Tuvaluan language...
(1942-) wrote the song Tuvalu mo te Atua
Tuvalu mo te Atua
Tuvalu for the Almighty is the national anthem of Tuvalu. The lyrics and music are by Afaese Manoa.It was adopted in 1978, when the country became independent.-Tuvaluan lyrics:...
, adopted in 1978 as the country's national anthem.
Oral traditions
Although Tuvaluan does not have a longstanding written tradition, there is a considerable corpus of oral traditions. The legend of the Caves of NanumangaCaves of Nanumanga
Caves of Nanumanga is underwater cave off the northern shore of Nanumanga, Tuvalu in western Polynesia. Discovered by two scuba divers in 1986.Cave is located - below the sea level, down the wall of a coral cliff...
has attracted international attention.
Academic study and major publications
There has been limited work done on Tuvaluan from an English-speaking perspective. The first major work on Tuvaluan syntax was done by Douglas 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. Jackson’s An Introduction to Tuvaluan is a useful guide to the language from a first contact point of view. There are some tensions between Besnier’s description of Tuvaluan and others – often based on Besnier’s commitment to a phonetically accurate orthography, which others reject as radical and has not been embraced by Tuvaluans. The orthography used by most Tuvaluan is based on Samoan, and, according to Besnier, isn’t 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.External links
- Niko Besnier. 2000. Tuvaluan: A Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific. London:Routledge
- Niko Besnier. 1995. Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll. Cambridge University Press
- Ethnologue
- Geoff and Jenny Jackson. 1999. An introduction to Tuvaluan. Suva: Oceania Printers.
- Donald Gilbert Kennedy. 1945. Handbook on the Language of the Tuvalu (Ellice) Islands
- Formatted, easy-to-use web version of the Handbook on the Language of the Tuvalu Islands
- http://www2.ling.su.se/pollinet/facts/tok.html
- Caves of Nanumanga legend: http://www.tuvaluislands.com/history-caves.htm