Iaai Language
Iaai (Iaai pronunciation: ; ) is a language of Ouvéa Island (New Caledonia). It shares the island of Ouvéa with West Uvean, Fagauvea, a Polynesian outlier language. Iaai is the sixth-most-spoken language of New Caledonia, with 4078 speakers as of 2009. It is taught in schools in an effort to preserve it. The language has been studied by linguists Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre and Anne-Laure Dotte. Phonology Iaai is remarkable for its large inventory of unusual phonemes, in particular its consonants, with a rich variety of voiceless nasals and approximants. Vowels Iaai has ten vowel qualities, all of which may occur long and short. There is little difference in quality depending on length. Iaai constitutes one of the few cases of front rounded vowels attested outside of their geographic stronghold in Eurasia, even if other cases have since been reported in the Oceanic family.See for example Löyöp, Lemerig, Vurës of northern Vanuatu, p.194 of: . The vowel is only known t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ouvéa Island
Ouvéa Island or Uvea Island is one of the Loyalty Islands, in the archipelago of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. The island is part of the communes of France, commune (municipality) of Ouvéa, in the Loyalty Islands Province of New Caledonia. Geography The crescent-shaped island, which belongs to a larger atoll, is long and wide. It lies north east of ''Grande Terre'', New Caledonia's mainland. History Ouvéa is a Polynesian outlier originally settled by Polynesian navigation, Polynesian navigators who named it for their home island, Wallis Island, Uvea Island. Some of their descendants still speak the West Uvean language. Demographics Ouvéa is home to around 3,000 people who are organized into tribes divided into Polynesians and Melanesians by ethnic descent. The Iaai language is spoken on the island. Flora and fauna Ouvéa has rich marine resources and is home to many sea turtles, species of fish, coral as well as a native parrot, the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rounded Vowel
In phonetics, vowel roundedness is the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a ''rounded'' vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and ''unrounded'' vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, and back vowels tend to be rounded. However, some languages, such as French, German and Icelandic, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height (degree of openness), and Vietnamese distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. Alekano has only unrounded vowels. In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, and , to indicate greater and lesser degrees of rounding, respectively. Thus has less rounding than cardinal , and has more (closer to the rounding of cardinal ). These diacritics can also be use ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prenasalized Stop
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather than clusters as in English ''finger'' or ''member'', lies in their behaviour; however, there may also be phonetic correlates which distinguish prenasalized consonants from clusters. Because of the additional difficulty in both articulation and timing, prenasalized fricatives and sonorants are not as common as prenasalized stops or affricates, and the presence of the former implies the latter. Only three languages ( Sinhala, Fula, Selayarese) have been reported to have a contrast between prenasalized consonants (C) and their corresponding clusters (NC). In most languages, when a prenasalized consonant is described as "voiceless", it is only the oral portion that is voiceless, and the nasal portion is modally voiced. Thus, a language may have "vo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Coronal Consonant
Coronals are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Among places of articulation, only the coronal consonants can be divided into as many articulation types: apical (using the tip of the tongue), laminal (using the blade of the tongue), domed (with the tongue bunched up), or subapical (using the underside of the tongue) as well as different postalveolar articulations (some of which also involve the back of the tongue as an articulator): palato-alveolar, alveolo-palatal and retroflex. Only the front of the tongue (coronal) has such dexterity among the major places of articulation, allowing such variety of distinctions. Coronals have another dimension, grooved, to make sibilants in combination with the orientations above. Places of articulation Coronal places of articulation include the dental consonants at the upper teeth, the alveolar consonants at the upper gum (the alveolar ridge), the various postalveolar consonants (including domed palato- ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sonorant Consonant
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 are sonorants, as are semivowels like and , nasal consonants like and , and liquid consonants like and . This set of sounds contrasts with the obstruents ( stops, affricates and fricatives). For some authors, only the term ''resonant'' is used with this broader meaning, while ''sonorant'' is restricted to the consonantal subset—that is, nasals and liquids only, not vocoids (vowels and semivowels). Types Whereas obstruents are frequently voiceless, sonorants are almost always voiced. In the sonority hierarchy, all sounds higher than fricatives are sonorants. They can therefore form the nucleus of a syllable in languages that place that distinction at that level of sonority; see Syllable for details. Sonorants contrast with obstruents, w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji. Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesians, Melanesian people. The first Europeans to visit the islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, Fernandes de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island, Espíritu Santo, in 1606. Queirós claimed the archipelago for Spain, as part of the colonial Spanish East Indies and named it . In the 1880s, France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906, they agreed on a framework for jointly managing the archipelago as the New Hebrides through an Anglo-French condominium (international law), condominium. An independence movem ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lemerig
Lemerig is an Oceanic language spoken on Vanua Lava, in Vanuatu. The language is no longer actively spoken. The 2 remaining speakers live on the northern coast of the island. Lemerig has receded in favour of its neighbours Mwotlap and Vera'a. Name The name ''Lemerig'' refers to a now abandoned village in northern Vanua Lava; it is spelled in the language of the same name. It reflects an earlier Proto-Torres-Banks form ''*lemeriɣi'', where the ''*riɣi'' component likely means "small". Dialects Lemerig has sometimes been referred to using the names of its local varieties: ''Päk''; ''Sasar''; ''Alo-Teqel''. Judging from wordlists published by missionary and linguist Robert Codrington, these three varieties were very close to each other. The little differences there were went extinct during the 20th century. Phonology Lemerig has 11 phonemic vowels. These are all short monophthongs .See François 2021. Grammar The system of personal pronouns in Lemerig contrasts c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eurasia
Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents dates back to classical antiquity, antiquity, but their borders have historically been subject to change. For example, the ancient Greeks originally included Africa in Asia but classified Europe as separate land. Eurasia is connected to Africa at the Suez Canal, and the two are sometimes combined to describe the largest contiguous landmass on Earth, Afro-Eurasia. History Eurasia has been the host of many ancient civilizations, including those based in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China. In the Axial Age (mid-first millennium BCE), a continuous belt of civilizations stretched through the Eurasian Subtropics, subtropical zone from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This belt became the mainstream of world history for two millennia. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Front Rounded Vowel
A front rounded vowel is a particular type of vowel that is both front and rounded. The front rounded vowels defined by the IPA include: * , a close front-rounded vowel (or "high front rounded vowel") * , a near-close front rounded vowel (or "near-high ...") * , a close-mid front rounded vowel (or "high-mid ...") * , a mid front rounded vowel * , an open-mid front rounded vowel (or "low-mid ...") * , an open front rounded vowel (or "low ...") Front rounded vowels are cross-linguistically relatively uncommon, but occur in a number of well-known languages, including French, German, Turkish, and Mandarin. Lip rounding is produced by bringing the corners of the lips together and protruding them forward. This is harder to do while producing low or open vowels since the lips are being stressed vertically. This may explain why low vowels are usually unrounded. Roundedness is usually associated with back vowels. This helps to reinforce the low-pitched formant frequencies assoc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Open Vowel
An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned approximately as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels (in U.S. terminology ) in reference to the low position of the tongue. In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a ''low vowel'' can be any vowel that is more open than a mid vowel. That is, open-mid vowels, near-open vowels, and open vowels can all be considered low vowels. Partial list The open vowels with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * open front unrounded vowel * open front rounded vowel This vowel is not known to occur as a phoneme distinct from in any language. * open back unrounded vowel * open back rounded vowel There also are central vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA: * open central unrounded vowel or (commonly written as if it were front vowel, front) * open central rounded vowel There is no unambiguous way of transc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |