Torres Strait Island Languages
There are three languages spoken in the Torres Strait Islands: two indigenous languages and an English-based creole. The indigenous language spoken mainly in the western and central islands is Kalaw Lagaw Ya, belonging to the Pama–Nyungan languages of the Australian mainland. The other indigenous language spoken mainly in the eastern islands is Meriam Mir: a member of the Trans-Fly languages spoken on the nearby south coast of New Guinea and the only Papuan language spoken on Australian territory. Both languages are agglutinative; however Kalaw Lagaw Ya appears to be undergoing a transition into a declensional language while Meriam Mìr is more clearly agglutinative. Yumplatok, or Torres Strait Creole, the third language, is a non-typical Pacific English Creole and is the main language of communication on the islands. Kalaw Lagaw Ya The language of the western and central islands of Torres Strait is related to languages of the Australian mainland and is a member of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Torres Strait Islander Languages Used At Home
Torres may refer to: People *Torres (surname), a Spanish and Portuguese surname * Torres (musician), singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott ** ''Torres'' (album), 2013 self-titled album by Torres Places Americas * Torres, Colorado, an unincorporated community *Torres, Rio Grande do Sul, a city in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil * Torres, Riverside County, California, Cahuilla village site in California * Torres Municipality, Lara, Venezuela *Torres del Paine, a mountain group in Torres del Paine National Park in the Patagonia region of Chile Europe *Porto Torres, a commune and city in the Sassari province of Sardinia (Italy) *Torres Novas, a municipality in the Santarém district of Portugal *Torres Vedras, a city and a municipality in the Lisbon district of Portugal * Logudoro/Torres, historical region, Sardinia, Italy Spain * Torres, a municipality in the province of Jaén, Andalusia * Torres de Albánchez, a municipality in the province of Jaén * Torres Torres, a mu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kalau Lagau Ya
Kalau Lagau Ya, Kalaw Lagaw Ya, Kala Lagaw Ya (), or the Western Torres Strait language (also several other names, see below) is the language indigenous to the central and western Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia. On some islands, it has now largely been replaced by Torres Strait Creole. Before colonization in the 1870s–1880s, the language was the major lingua franca of the Torres Strait cultural area of Northern Cape York Australia, Torres Strait and along the coast of the Western Province/Papua New Guinea. It is still fairly widely spoken by neighbouring Papuans and by some Aboriginal Australians. How many non-first language speakers it has is unknown. It also has a 'light' (simplified/foreigner) form, as well as a pidginised form. The simplified form is fairly prevalent on Badu and neighbouring Moa. Names The language is known by several names besides ''Kalaw Lagaw Ya'', most of which (including ''Kalaw Lagaw Ya'') are names of dialects, spelling variants, d ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Agglutinative Languages
An agglutinative language is a type of language that primarily forms words by stringing together morphemes (word parts)—each typically representing a single grammatical meaning—without significant modification to their forms ( agglutinations). In such languages, affixes ( prefixes, suffixes, infixes, or circumfixes) are added to a root word in a linear and systematic way, creating complex words that encode detailed grammatical information. This structure allows for a high degree of transparency, as the boundaries between morphemes are usually clear and their meanings consistent. Agglutinative languages are a subset of synthetic languages. Within this category, they are distinguished from fusional languages, where morphemes often blend or change form to express multiple grammatical functions, and from polysynthetic languages, which can combine numerous morphemes into single words with complex meanings. Examples of agglutinative languages include Turkish, Finnish, Japane ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Australian Aboriginal Sign Languages
Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a sign language, signed counterpart of their oral language. This appears to be connected with various avoidance speech, speech taboos between certain kin or at particular times, such as during a mourning period for women or during initiation ceremonies for men, as was also the case with Caucasian Sign Language but not Plains Indian Sign Language, which did not involve speech taboo, or deaf sign languages, which are not encodings of oral language. There is some similarity between neighbouring groups and some contact pidgin similar to Plains Indian Sign Language in the American Great Plains. Sign languages appear to be most developed in areas with the most extensive speech taboos: the central desert (particularly among the Warlpiri people, Warlpiri and Warumungu), and western Cape York Peninsula, Cape York.Adam Kendon, Kendon, A. (1988) ''Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Creole Language
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable form of contact language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often a pidgin), and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fledged language with Nativization, native speakers, all within a fairly brief period. While the concept is similar to that of a mixed language, mixed or hybrid language, creoles are often characterized by a tendency to systematize their inherited grammar (e.g., by eliminating irregularities). Like any language, creoles are characterized by a consistent system of grammar, possess large stable vocabularies, and are Language acquisition, acquired by children as their native language. These three features distinguish a creole language from a pidgin. Creolistics, or creology, is the study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist. The precise number of creole languages ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. It has Indonesia–Papua New Guinea border, a land border with Indonesia to the west and neighbours Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east. Its capital, on its southern coast, is Port Moresby. The country is the world's third largest list of island countries, island country, with an area of . The nation was split in the 1880s between German New Guinea in the North and the Territory of Papua, British Territory of Papua in the South, the latter of which was ceded to Australia in 1902. All of present-day Papua New Guinea came under Australian control following World War I, with the legally distinct Territory of New Guinea being established out of the former German colony as a League of Nations mandate. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Papuan Language
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship. New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides the Austronesian languages, there arguably are some 800 languages divided into perhaps sixty small language families, with unclear relationships to each other or to any other languages, plus many language isolates. The majority of the Papuan languages are spoken on the island of New Guinea, with a number spoken in the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands to the east, and in Halmahera, Timor and the Alor archipelago to the west. The westernmost language, Tambora in Sumbawa, is extinct. One Papuan language, Meriam, is spoken within the national borders of Australia, in the eastern Torres Strait. Several langua ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Meriam Mìr
Meriam (; also ''Miriam, Meryam, Mer, Mir, Miriam-Mir'', etc. and ''Eastern, Isten, Esten'' and ''Able Able'') or the Eastern Torres Strait language is the language of the people of the small islands of ''Mer'' (Murray Island, Queensland, Murray Island), ''Waier'' and ''Dauar'', ''Erub'' (Darnley Island (Queensland), Darnley Island), and ''Ugar'' (Stephens Island (Torres Strait), Stephens Island) in the eastern Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. In the Western Torres Strait language, Kalaw Lagaw Ya, it is called ''Mœyam'' or ''Mœyamau Ya''. It is the only Papuan language in Australia, Australian territory. Classification Meriam was classified in the Eastern Trans-Fly languages, Eastern Trans-Fly family of the Trans–New Guinea languages, Trans–New Guinea Phylum by Stephen Wurm, who however felt that these have retained remnants of pre-Trans–New Guinea languages; this is followed by Ethnologue (2005). In 2005 Malcolm Ross (linguist), Malcolm Ross concluded that the Eas ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Torres Strait Creole
Torres Strait Creole (), also known as Torres Strait Pidgin, Brokan/Broken, Cape York Creole, Lockhart Creole, Kriol, Papuan, Broken English, Blaikman, Big Thap, Pizin, and Ailan Tok, is an English-based creole language (a variety of Pidgin English) spoken on several Torres Strait Islands of Queensland, Australia; Northern Cape York; and south-western coastal Papua New Guinea (PNG). It has an estimated 20,000–30,000 mother-tongue and bi/tri-lingual speakers. It is widely used as a language of trade and commerce. History Records of pidgin English being used in Torres Strait exist from as early as the 1840s (e.g. Moore 1979), and therefore Torres Strait Creole may very well be as old as, if not older, than its sister languages, and not a descendant of any of these. It was spread throughout the islands because many considered it to be English. The main importers of the pidgin were British and other sailors, many of whom were South Sea Islanders, both Melanesian and Polyne ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Torres Strait Islands
The Torres Strait Islands are an archipelago of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their total land area is . The Islands are inhabited by the indigenous Torres Strait Islanders. Lieutenant James Cook first claimed British sovereignty over the eastern part of Australia at Possession Island, Queensland, Possession Island in 1770, but British administrative control only began in the Torres Strait Islands in 1862. The islands are now mostly part of Queensland, a constituent State of the Australia, Commonwealth of Australia, but are administered by the Torres Strait Regional Authority, a statutory authority of the Australian federal government. A few islands very close to the coast of mainland New Guinea belong to the Western Province (Papua New Guinea), Western Province of Papua New Guinea, most importantly Daru Island and its provi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence by way of an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and determiners. It serves to indicate grammatical number, number (e.g. singular, dual, plural), grammatical case, case (e.g. nominative case, nominative, accusative case, accusative, genitive case, genitive, or dative case, dative), grammatical gender, gender (e.g. masculine, feminine, or neuter), and a number of other grammatical categories. Inflectional change of verbs is called Grammatical conjugation, conjugation. Declension occurs in many languages. It is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan languages, Quechuan (i.e., languages native to the Andes), Indo-European languages, Indo-European (e.g. German language, German, Icelandic language, Icelandic, Irish language, Irish, Baltic language, Lithuanian and Latvian, Slavic lang ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |