Tuvaluan is a Nuclear Polynesian language of 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 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 13,051 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages used by some 351 million speakers. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: it is patent nonsense. ... The family of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages is a subgroup of the Central Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages. ... The Oceanic languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, containing approximately 450 languages. ... The family of Central-Eastern Oceanic languages is a subgroup of the Oceanic languages. ... The family of Remote Oceanic languages is a subgroup of the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages. ... The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ... Nuclear Polynesian refers to those languages comprising the Samoic the Eastern Polynesian branches of the Polynesian group of Austronesian languages. ... The Samoic languages are one of the primary classes of Polynesian languages, encompassing the Polynesian languages of Samoa, Tuvalu, American Samoa, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, as well as a number of languages, spoken in parts of Tonga, the Cook Islands, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and... The Ellicean languages are a subgroup of the Samoic languages, including the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, and the northern Solomon Islands, as well as the languages of Tuvalu and sometimes Tokelau. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ...

History

Like all other Polynesian languages, Tuvaluan descends from an ancestral language, which historical linguists refer to as "Proto-Polynesian," which was spoken around 3,000 years ago.

Grammar

The sound system of Tuvaluan consists of five vowels (i, e, a, o, u) and 10 or 11 consonants (p, t, k, m, n, ng, f, v, s, h, l), depending on the dialect. All sounds come in short and long forms, which are contrastive. There are four possible articles 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). The verb can be either clause-initial or clause-medial, and the order of subject, direct object, and indirect object is relatively free. The adjective generally follows the noun, the possessor followed the possessed. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ...

Dialects

Tuvaluan is divided into two groups of dialects, Northern Tuvaluan, comprising dialects spoken on the islands of Nanumea, Nanumaga, and Niutao (as well as Niulakita), 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. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ... Gilbertese or Kiribati (sometimes Kiribatese, a mixture of both) is a language from the Austronesian family, part of the Oceanian branch and of the Nuclear Micronesian subbranch. ...

Tuvaluan is intelligible to the circa 1,700 speakers of Tokelauan, on the atolls of Tokelau, and on Swains Island in neighbouring American Samoa. Swains Island is an atoll in the Tokelau chain, the most northwesterly island administered by American Samoa. ...

Literature

The Bible was translated into Tuvaluan in 1987. Apart from this, there are very few Tuvaluan language books available. There is, however, a newspaper published in Tuvaluan, called Sikuleo o Tuvalu.

External links

• Niko Besnier, 2000, Tuvaluan: a Polynesian language of the Central Pacific, Routledge
• Niko Besnier, 1995, Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll, Cambridge University Press
• Ethnologue
• Donald Gilbert Kennedy's 1945 Tuvaluan Grammar
• http://www.ling.su.se/pollinet/facts/tok.html