Aurora Island
Maewo (; formerly ''Aurora Island'') is an island in Vanuatu in Penama province, 105 km to the east of Espiritu Santo. It is 47 km long, and 6 km wide, with an area of 269 km2. Its highest point is 795 m above sea level. In 2009 the island had a population of almost 3,600. Maewo is covered with dense vegetation: tropical forests in which banyan trees grow. Name The name ''Maewo'' is thought to have come from Mota or Raga as an attempt to transcribe the pronunciation . In the local languages it is spelled as ''N̄waewo'' . Other names for the island include Mwerlap ''N̄wēw'' and Mwotlap ''Am̄ew'' (with the locative prefix ''a-''). All of these terms are thought to have come from Proto-North-Central Vanuatu (and Proto-Torres–Banks) ''*mʷaewo''. History First recorded sighting of Maewo Island by Europeans was by the Spanish expedition of Pedro Fernández de Quirós at the end of April 1606.Brand, Donald D. ''The Pacific Basin: A History o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aurora Islands
The Aurora Islands was a group of three phantom islands first reported in 1762 by the Spanish merchant ship ''Aurora'' while sailing from Lima to Cadiz. The Aurora's officers reported sighting them again in 1774. The Spanish ship ''San Miguel'' fixed their location at 52°37'S, 47°49'W. On 20 February 1794, they were sighted again by a Spanish survey ship, the corvette ''Atrevida'', which as part of the Alejandro Malaspina circumnavigation had been sent to confirm them. Their reported location was approximately halfway between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia at . The latitude is considered perfect; the longitude was based on the meridian of the astronomical observatory, San Fernando, Cádiz. The islands were last reportedly sighted in 1856, but continued to appear on maps of the South Atlantic until the 1870s. It is possible that the Aurora islands were "discovered" by Amerigo Vespucci in his 1501/1502 voyage with a Portuguese expedition. In his "Lettera" of 1504, his ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Raga Language
Raga (also known as Hano) is the language of northern Pentecost Island in Vanuatu. Like all Vanuatu languages, Raga belongs to the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian languages family. In old sources the language is sometimes referred to by the names of villages in which it is spoken, such as Bwatvenua (Qatvenua), Lamalanga, Vunmarama and Loltong. It is the most conservative language of Pentecost Island, having preserved final vowels while also retaining the five-vowel system inherited from Proto-Oceanic, compared to other languages spoken on the island, which have all developed additional vowels in addition to pervasive vowel deletion. With an estimated 6,500 native speakers (in the year 2000), Raga is the second most widely spoken of Pentecost's five native languages (after Apma), and the seventh largest vernacular in Vanuatu as a whole. There are significant communities of Raga speakers on Maewo island and in Port Vila and Luganville as a result of emigration from Pentecost. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maewo-Naone Airport
Maewo-Naone Airport is an airport on Maewo 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 no .... Airlines and destinations References Airports in Vanuatu Penama Province {{vanuatu-geo-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rainfall
Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water for hydroelectric power plants, crop irrigation, and suitable conditions for many types of ecosystems. The major cause of rain production is moisture moving along three-dimensional zones of temperature and moisture contrasts known as weather fronts. If enough moisture and upward motion is present, precipitation falls from convective clouds (those with strong upward vertical motion) such as cumulonimbus (thunder clouds) which can organize into narrow rainbands. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation which forces moist air to condense and fall out as rainfall along the sides of mountains. On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pedro Fernandes De Queirós
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós ( es, Pedro Fernández de Quirós) (1563–1614) was a Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain. He is best known for his involvement with Spanish voyages of discovery in the Pacific Ocean, in particular the 1595–1596 voyage of Álvaro de Mendaña y Neira, and for leading a 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 comman ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Proto-Torres–Banks Language
Proto-Torres-Banks (abbr. PTB) is the reconstructed ancestor of the seventeen languages of the Torres and Banks Islands of Vanuatu. Like all indigenous languages of Vanuatu, it belongs to the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian languages. Descendants Proto-Torres-Banks is the shared ancestor of the following modern languages: Hiw, Lo-Toga, Lehali, Löyöp, Volow, Mwotlap, Lemerig, Vera'a, Vurës, Mwesen, Mota, Nume, Dorig, Koro, Olrat, Lakon, and Mwerlap. Reconstruction Proto-Torres-Banks, as reconstructed with the comparative method from the attested daughter languages, evidently represented an early, mutually intelligible chain of Oceanic dialects in the northern part of Vanuatu, as evidenced by the pattern of loss and retention of the Proto-Oceanic phoneme ''*R'', which merged with ''*r'' in the early history of the North-Central Vanuatu dialect chain. It therefore is not a "true" proto-language in the sense of an undifferentiated language ancestral to all Torres ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mwotlap Language
Mwotlap (pronounced ; formerly known as ''Motlav'') is an Oceanic language spoken by about 2,100 people in Vanuatu. The majority of speakers are found on the island of Motalava in the Banks Islands, with smaller communities in the islands of Ra (or ''Aya'') and Vanua Lava, as well as migrant groups in the two main cities of the country, Santo and Port Vila. Mwotlap was first described in any detail in 2001, by the linguist Alexandre François. Volow, which used to be spoken on the same island, may be considered a dialect or a separate language. The language Name The language is named after the island. Geographic distribution Mwotlap is spoken by about 2,100 people in the Banks Islands, in the North of Vanuatu. Among them, 1,640 live on the island of Mota Lava and its neighbor island, Ra. It is also spoken by a few hundred people living elsewhere in Vanuatu: * Vanua Lava, particularly in the northeast * Several other northern Vanuatu islands including Ureparapara, Gaua, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mwerlap Language
Mwerlap is an Oceanic language spoken in the south of the Banks Islands in Vanuatu. Its 1,100 speakers live mostly in Merelava and Merig, but a fair proportion have also settled the east coast of Gaua island.François (2012: 97). Besides, a number of Mwerlap speakers live in the two cities of Vanuatu, Port Vila and Luganville. Name The language is named after ''Mwerlap'', the native name of Merelava island. Phonology Mwerlap has 12 phonemic vowels. These include 9 monophthongs and 3 diphthongs . Grammar The system of personal pronouns in Mwerlap contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes three numbers (singular, dual, plural). Spatial reference in Mwerlap is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is in part typical of Oceanic languages, and yet innovative. François (2015:) 173-175). References Bibliography * * . * * * External linksLinguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of MwerlapOnline material in Mwerlap (Merlav) audio recordings, docu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Société De Linguistique De Paris
The Société de Linguistique de Paris (established 1864) is the editing body of the ''BSL'' (''Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique'') journal. Members of the society have included such well-known French linguists as Bréal, Saussure, Meillet, and Benveniste The Spanish Benveniste family is an old, noble, wealthy, and scholarly Jewish family of Narbonne, France and northern Spain established in the 11th century. The family was present in the 11th to the 15th centuries in Hachmei Provence, France, Barc .... In addition to its monthly meetings, the group holds a one-day conference each January dedicated to a particular topic. In 1997, it organised the '' Congrès International des Linguistes'' in Paris. References External links *http://www.slp-paris.com/ Linguistic societies Organizations based in Paris {{ling-org-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mota Language
Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu. The language (named after the island) is one of the most conservative Torres–Banks languages, and the only one to keep its inherited five-vowel system intact while also preserving most final vowels. History During the period 1840-1940, Mota was used as a missionary ''lingua franca'' throughout areas of Oceania included in the Melanesian Mission, an Anglican missionary agency. Mota was used on Norfolk Island, in religious education; on other islands with different vernacular languages, it served as the language of liturgical prayers, hymns, and some other religious purposes. Elizabeth Fairburn Colenso translated religious material into the language. Robert Henry Codrington compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with George Sarawia and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language. Phonology Phoneme inventory Mota phonemically con ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Oceania in the west and the Americas in the east. At in area (as defined with a southern Antarctic border), this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about 32% of its total surface area, larger than Earth's entire land area combined .Pacific Ocean . '' Britannica Concise.'' 2008: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The centers of both the [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sea Level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised geodetic datumthat is used, for example, as a chart datum in cartography and marine navigation, or, in aviation, as the standard sea level at which atmospheric pressure is measured to calibrate altitude and, consequently, aircraft flight levels. A common and relatively straightforward mean sea-level standard is instead the midpoint between a mean low and mean high tide at a particular location. Sea levels can be affected by many factors and are known to have varied greatly over geological time scales. Current sea level rise is mainly caused by human-induced climate change. When temperatures rise, Glacier, mountain glaciers and the Ice sheet, polar ice caps melt, increasing the amount of water in water bodies. Because most of human settlem ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |