Mele-Fila (Ifira-Mele) is a Polynesian language spoken in Mele and

Ifira Ifira is an offshore island of efate located in Shefa Province of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean. Geography Ifira lies off the coast of Efate Island in Vila harbour. Ifira spans about from the north to the south and from the east to the west. T ...

on the island of Efate in

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of ...

. In spite of their differences, Mele and Fila are two dialects of the same language and are mutually intelligible. French and English are also fairly common among the residents of Efate. Mele-Fila is an everyday language for residents of Mele village and Fila Island. Mele village, with a population of 1,000, is located roughly 7 km north-west of Port Vila, the nation’s capital. Fila Island, with a population of 400, is located about 1.5km west of Vila.

History

Based on archaeological evidence, it is understood that peoples speaking Austronesian languages originated on the island of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

about 6000 years ago. Some of their descendants formed the Lapita civilisation, who sailed to Remote Oceania, including

, roughly 3,200 years ago.Bedford, Stuart; Spriggs, Matthew. 2008
Northern Vanuatu as a Pacific Crossroads: The Archaeology of Discovery, Interaction, and the Emergence of the "Ethnographic Present"
''Asian Perspectives'' 47 (1), 95-120. The population of Mele-Fila belongs to the '' Polynesian outliers'', who historically came from Central Polynesia (Tonga, Samoa) during the last two millennia.

Phonology

This language is unusual among Polynesian languages for its phoneme /tɕ/. In the Fila dialect, /p/ and /m/ are not distinct from their labialized counterparts. Mele vowels are similar to other Polynesian vowels as there are /i e a o u/ long and short. More than half of the words used in the language hail from Proto Polynesian language. Stressed initial vowels were kept, while unstressed initial vowels were removed. :"Ex: English: then, Mele: gafuru, PPN: angafulu" :"Ex: English: yesterday, Mele: nanafi, PPN: ananafi" Articles and verbal particles with unstressed long vowels often have their unstressed vowel shortened: :Ex: ruú ́́are - “The two houses” :Ex: ru pókasi - “the two pigs”

Consonant clusters In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education ...

(strings of consonants without a vowel) exist, but can only be formed from these three combinations: # a

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels ar ...

and an obstruent # a

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

and a stop, # an obstruent and a

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

. Word stress usually falls on the second-to-last syllable. Mele-Fila words usually contain at least three vowels. Similar to many Polynesian languages, this requires counting long vowels as two vowels. Mele-Fila has borrowed significantly from the Efate languages of

. It also borrowed from

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

and

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

via

Bislama Bislama (; ; also known by its earlier French name, ) is an English-based creole language and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" (citizens who live in Port Vila and Luganvil ...

, one of Vanuatu's national languages and

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

. This has caused its syllable structure to allow (C)VC consonants as well as (C)V. Consonants can be

geminated In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct fr ...

(vocally lengthened), which indicates that a noun is

plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...

Syntax

Mele-Fila has a Subject – Verb – Object sentence order.

Verbal particles

Below is a list of "verbal particles": * ''Ee'' – not of the future (past or current) * * ''Tee'' – intentional (could also mean immediate future) * * ''Too'' (''roo'' in 3rd person) – future * * ''Kuu'' – indicates of an action/event * * ''Kaa'' – used when communicating to relatives below your social standing * * ''Kee'' (uncommon)- hypothetical * * Negation marker used post verb /kee/ (more common) * * Negation marker used pre-verb /see/ only used with ee or tee verbal particles * * Loose possession- used for actual ownership and some family relationships (possessed + ''n(a)'' + Possessor) * * Intimate possession – relation between parts/wholes and certain family relations * * ''Noki'' – frequent/habitual (always)

External links

* Materials on Mele-Fila are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections
AC1
an
AC2
held by Paradisec. * *
History of Polynesian Languages
*Bedford, Stuart; Spriggs, Matthew. "Northern Vanuatu as a Pacific Crossroads: The Archaeology of Discovery, Interaction, and the Emergence of the "ethnographic Present"". Asian Perspectives. University of Hawai'i Press. 47 (1): 95–120. JSTOR 42928734. *The Austronesian Languages By Robert Blust

*WALS Onlin

* The Commonwealth: http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/vanuatu/history *Nations Online: https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/vanuatu.htm *http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/vanuatu-population/

References

{{Austronesian languages Polynesian outliers Languages of Vanuatu Futunic languages