Vanuatuan Educators
   HOME



picture info

Vanuatuan Educators
Ni-Vanuatu (informally abbreviated Ni-Van) is a large group of closely related Melanesian ethnic groups native to the island country of Vanuatu. As such, ''ni-Vanuatu'' are a mixed ethnolinguistic group with a shared ethnogenesis that speak a multitude of languages. The ''ni-Vanuatu'' or ''ni-Van'' is usually restricted to the indigenous population of Vanuatu. It contrasts with the demonym ''Vanuatuan'', which in principle refers to any citizen of Vanuatu, regardless of their origin or ethnicity. (The form ''Vanuatuan'' is in fact rarely used in English, and is regarded as incorrect by some authors and style guides.) Due to the history of British and French colonialism, indigenous people of Vanuatu generally speak English and French, as well as Bislama. The cultural aspects of ni-Vanuatu society have been instilled on the indigenous community and are expressed through clothing, rituals, ceremonies, music, performing and fine arts, and cuisine. The spiritual ties ni-Vanuatu ha ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bislama
Bislama ( ; ; also known by its earlier French name, ) is an English-based creole language. It is the national language of Vanuatu, and one of the three official languages of the country, the other ones being English and French. Bislama is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" (citizens who live in Port Vila and Luganville) and the second language of much of the rest of the country's residents. The lyrics of " Yumi, Yumi, Yumi", the country's national anthem, are composed in Bislama. More than 95% of Bislama words are of English origin, whilst the remainder comprises a few dozen words from French as well as some specific vocabulary inherited from various languages of Vanuatu—although these are essentially limited to flora and fauna terminology. While the influence of these vernacular languages is low on the vocabulary side, it is very high in the morphosyntax. As such, Bislama can be described simply as a language with an English vocabulary and an Oceanic gra ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Kastom
''Kastom'' is a pidgin word (Bislama/Tok Pisin) used to refer to traditional culture, including religion, economics, art and magic in Melanesia. The term is the generally accepted term in anthropology to describe such phenomena as well as the common and lay term used in everyday language. The word derives from the Australian English pronunciation of 'custom' but crosses meanings that incorporate: * Convention (norm) * Custom (law) or customary law * Norm (sociology) and * Tradition It is consistent in spelling across most of the many variations in pidgin and pisin across the region. Kastom is mostly not written, only passed down through teachings and stories. It is concentrated through: * Kastom House - sites where objects and rituals are stored. * Kastom stories - myths, legends and communal histories. * ritual objects - objects of special power, significance and symbolism. The use of the word is slightly different in the different countries and cultures of Melanesia. The ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

James Cook
Captain (Royal Navy), Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer famous for his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans, conducted between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand and was the first known European to visit the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager before enlisting in the Royal Navy in 1755. He served during the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, siege of Quebec. In the 1760s, he mapped the coastline of Newfoundland (island), Newfoundland and made important astronomical observations which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty (United Kingdom), Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment in Brit ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Pedro Fernandes De Queirós
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós () (1563–1614) was a Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain. He is best known for leading several Spanish voyages of discovery in the Pacific Ocean, in particular the 1595–1596 voyage of Álvaro de Mendaña y Neira, and for the 1605–1606 expedition that crossed the Pacific in search of '' Terra Australis''. Early life Queirós (or Quirós as he signed) was born in Évora, Portugal in 1563. As the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies had been unified under the king of Spain in 1580 (following the vacancy of the Portuguese throne, which lasted for sixty years, until 1640, when the Portuguese monarchy was restored), Queirós entered Spanish service as a young man and became an experienced seaman and navigator. In April 1595, he joined Álvaro de Mendaña y Neira on his voyage to colonize the Solomon Islands, serving as chief pilot. After Mendaña's death in October 1595, Queirós is credited with taking command and saving the only remaining sh ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lapita Culture
The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian peoples, Austronesian people and their distinct material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. The Lapita people are believed to have originated from the northern Philippines, either directly, via the Mariana Islands, or both. They were notable for their distinctive geometric designs on dentate-stamped pottery, which closely resemble the pottery recovered from the Nagsabaran archaeological site in northern Luzon. The Lapita intermarried with the Indigenous people of New Guinea, Papuan populations to various degrees, and are the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia. Etymology The term "Lapita" was coined by archaeologists after mishearing a word in the local Haveke language, ''xapeta'a'', which means "to dig a hole" or "the place where one digs", during the 1952 excavation in New Caledonia. The Lapita a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Austronesian Peoples
The Austronesian people, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples who have settled in Taiwan, maritime Southeast Asia, parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia. The group originated from a prehistoric seaborne migration, known as the Austronesian expansion, from Taiwan, circa 3000 to 1500 BCE. Austronesians reached the Batanes Islands in the northernmost Philippines by around 2200 BCE. They used sails some time before 2000 BCE. In conjunction with their use of other maritime technologies (notably catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed-lug boats, and the crab ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Terry Crowley (linguist)
Terence Michael Crowley (1 April 1953 – 15 January 2005) was an English-Australian linguist specializing in Oceanic languages as well as Bislama, the English-lexified Creole recognized as a national language in Vanuatu. From 1991 he taught in New Zealand. Previously, he was with the Pacific Languages Unit of the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu (1983–90) and with the Department of Language and Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea (1979–83). Life and career Crowley was born in Billericay, Essex in 1953. His English parents emigrated to Australia when he was roughly 7 years old, and the family settled on a dairy farm in the rural north of Victoria, just outside Shepparton, where Crowley received his early education. His parents raised him in the outback. He decided to become a philologist early, during his high school years at Shepparton High School, from which he graduated as dux in 1970. Crowley had already made inquiries as a fifteen-year old in 1 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Languages Of Vanuatu
The Republic of Vanuatu has the world's highest linguistic density per capita. Despite being a country with a Demographics of Vanuatu, population of less than 300,000, Vanuatu is home to 138 indigenous Oceanic languages, Oceanic languages. The country's three official languages are of foreign origin: English language, English, French language, French, and Bislama, an English-based creole languages, English-based creole language.Constitution of Vanuatu Article 3 Additional languages are also spoken as a result of recent migrations (e.g. Samoan language, Samoan, Hakka Chinese, Mandarin Chinese). The linguistic situation in Vanuatu Indigenous languages There are over one hundred local languages spread over the archipelago (#List_of_Vanuatu’s_indigenous_languages, listed below), all of them belonging to the Austronesian languages, Austronesian family of languages. Vanuatu is the country with the highest density of languages per capita in the world: it currently shows an average o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lingua Franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a First language, native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages. Linguae francae have developed around the world throughout human history, sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called "trade languages" facilitated trade), but also for cultural, religious, diplomatic and administrative convenience, and as a means of exchanging information between scientists and other scholars of different nationalities. The term is taken from the medieval Mediterranean Lingua Franca, a Romance languages, Romance-based pidgin language used especially by traders in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th c ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Proto-Austronesian Language
Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify in Taiwan. Lower-level reconstructions have also been made, and include Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Polynesian. Recently, linguists such as Malcolm Ross and Andrew Pawley have built large lexicons for Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Polynesian. Phonology Proto-Austronesian is reconstructed by constructing sets of correspondences among consonants in the various Austronesian languages, according to the comparative method. Although in theory the result should be unambiguous, in practice given the large number of languages there are numerous disagreements, with various scholars differing significantly on the number and nature of the phonemes in Proto-Austronesian. In the past, some disagreements concerned whether certain ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Language
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed ancestor of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is by far the largest branch (by current speakers) of the Austronesian languages, Austronesian language family. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian is ancestral to all Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan, as well as the Yami language on Taiwan's Orchid Island. The first systematic reconstruction of Proto-Austronesian language, Proto-Austronesian ("''Uraustronesisch''") by Otto Dempwolff was based on evidence from languages outside of Taiwan, and was therefore actually the first reconstruction of what is now known as Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Phonology Consonants The following consonants can be reconstructed for Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (Blust 2009): The phonetic value of the reconstructed sounds *p, *b, *w, *m, *t, *d, *n, *s, *l, *r, *k, *g, *ŋ, *q, *h was as indicated by the spelling. The symbols *ñ, *y, *z, *D, *j, *R are orthographic conventions fir ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Proto-Oceanic Language
Proto-Oceanic (abbreviated as POc) is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages. Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken around the late 2nd millennium BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago, east of Papua New Guinea. Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that its community more or less coincides with the Lapita culture. Linguistic characteristics The methodology of comparative linguistics, together with the relative homogeneity of Oceanic languages, make it possible to reconstruct with reasonable certainty the principal linguistic properties of their common ancestor, Proto-Oceanic. Like all scientific hypotheses, these reconstructions must be understood as obviously reflecting the state of science at a particular moment in ti ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]