|
Meriam Mir
Meriam ( ulk, Meriam Mìr; 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), ''Waier'' and ''Dauar'', ''Erub'' (Darnley Island), and ''Ugar'' ( 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 Australian territory. Classification Meriam was classified in the Eastern Trans-Fly family of the 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 concluded that the Eastern Trans-Fly languages were not part of the Trans–New Guinea phylum. R. M. W. Dixon (2002) regards claims of a relationship between the Fly River languages an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murray Island, Queensland
Murray Island (also known as Mer Island or Maer Island) in the Torres Strait Island Region, Queensland, Australia. The island is part of the Murray Island Group in the Torres Strait. The town is on the island's northwest coast and within the Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality of Mer Island, Queensland, Mer Island (the locality boundaries are the island's coastline). The island is of volcano, volcanic origin, the most easterly inhabited island of the Torres Strait Islands archipelago, just north of the Great Barrier Reef. The name ''Meer/Mer/Maer'' comes from the native Meriam language. In the , Murray Island had a population of 453. The island is populated by the Melanesians, Melanesian Meriam people. There are eight tribes on Mer: Komet, Zagareb, Meuram, Magaram, Geuram, Peibri, Meriam-Samsep, Piadram/Dauer. The island's organisation is based on traditional laws of boundary and ownership. Geography Murray Island, in the eastern section of Torres Strait, is a basalti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endangered Language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers. Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization, imperialism, neocolonialism and linguicide (language killing). Language shift most commonly occurs when speakers switch to a language associated with social or economic power or spoken more widely, the ultimate result being language death. The general consensus is that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages currently spoken. Some linguists estimate that between 50% and 90% of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black-birded
Blackbirding involves the coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant from their native land. The term has been most commonly applied to the large-scale taking of people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries. These blackbirded people were called Kanaka (Pacific Island worker), Kanakas or South Sea Islanders. They were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu, the Fiji islands and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago amongst others. The owners, captains, and crews of the ships involved in the acquisition of these labourers were termed ''blackbirders''. The demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from European colonists in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti and Hawaii, as well as plantations in Peru, Mexico and Guatemala. Labouring ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotuman Language
Rotuman, also referred to as ''Rotunan'', ''Rutuman'' or ''Fäeag Rotuạm'' (citation form: ''Faega Rotuma''), is an Austronesian language spoken by the indigenous people of the South Pacific island group of Rotuma, an island with a Polynesian-influenced culture that was incorporated as a dependency into the Colony of Fiji in 1881. Classification of Rotuman is difficult because of the large number of loan words from Samoan and Tongan, as a result of much cultural exchange over the history of the Pacific. Linguist Andrew Pawley groups the language with the West Fijian languages in a West Fijian–Rotuman branch of the Central Pacific subgroup of Oceanic languages. The Rotuman language has sparked much interest with linguists because the language uses metathesis to invert the ultimate vowel in a word with the immediately preceding consonant, resulting in a vowel system characterized by umlaut, vowel shortening or extending and diphthongization. Unlike its Pacific neighbors, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samoan Language
Samoan ( or ; ) is a Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language, alongside English, in both jurisdictions. It is widely spoken across the Pacific region, heavily so in New Zealand and also in Australia and the United States. Among the Polynesian languages, Samoan is the most widely spoken by number of native speakers. Samoan is spoken by approximately 260,000 people in the archipelago and with many Samoans living in diaspora in a number of countries, the total number of speakers worldwide was estimated at 510,000 in 2015. It is the third-most widely spoken language in New Zealand, where 2.2% of the population, 101,900 people, were able to speak it as of 2018. The language is notable for the phonological differences between formal and informal speech as well as a ceremonial form used in Samoan oratory. Cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dehu Language
Drehu (; also known as Dehu, Lifou, Lifu, qene drehu) is an Austronesian language mostly spoken on Lifou Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. It has about twelve-thousand fluent speakers and the status of a French regional language. This status means that pupils can take it as an optional topic for the baccalauréat in New Caledonia itself or French mainland. It has been also taught at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris since 1973 and at thUniversity of New Caledonia since 2000. As for other Kanak languages, Drehu is now regulated by the " Académie des langues kanak", officially founded in 2007. There is also a respectful register in Drehu, called ''qene miny''. In time past, this was used to speak to the chiefs (joxu). Today very few people still know and practice this language. Phonology Vowels is heard as before nasals. can sometimes be before nasals. Consonants Writing system Drehu was first written in the Lati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torres Strait Creole
Torres Strait Creole ( tcs, Yumplatok), 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. Torres Strait Creole has six main dialects: Papuan, Western-Central, TI, Malay, Eastern, and Cape York. 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. The main importers of the pidgin were British and other sailors, many of whom were South Sea I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loan Word
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin, and calques, which involve translation. Loanwords from languages with different scripts are usually transliterated (between scripts), but they are not translated. Additionally, loanwords may be adapted to phonology, phonotactics, orthography, and morphology of the target language. When a loanword is fully adapted to the rules of the target language, it is distinguished from native words of the target language only by its origin. However, often the adaptation is incomplete, so loanwords may conserve specific features distinguishing them from native words of the target language: loaned phonemes and sound combinations, partial or total conserving of the original spelling, foreign plural or case forms or indeclin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Language
Australia legally has no official language. However, English is by far the most commonly spoken and has been entrenched as the ''de facto'' national language since European settlement. "English has no de jure status but it is so entrenched as the common language that it is de facto the official language as well as the national language." Australian English is a major variety of the English language with a distinctive pronunciation and lexicon, and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling."The Macquarie Dictionary", Fourth Edition. The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, 2005. General Australian serves as the standard dialect. According to the 2021 census, English is the only language spoken in the home for 72% of the population. The ten next most common languages spoken at home are: Mandarin (2.7%), Arabic (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%), Punjabi (0.9%), Greek (0.9%), Italian (0.9%), Tagalog (0.9%), Hindi (0.8%) and Spanish (0.7%). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kala Lagaw 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 colonisation 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, sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' derives from Greek (''hymnos''), which means "a song of praise". A writer of hymns is known as a hymnist. The singing or composition of hymns is called hymnody. Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymn books. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment. Although most familiar to speakers of English in the context of Christianity, hymns are also a fixture of other world religions, especially on the Indian subcontinent (''stotras''). Hymns also survive from antiquity, especially from Egyptian and Greek cultures. Some of the oldest surviving examples of notated music are hymns with Greek texts. Origins Ancient Eastern hymns include the Egyptian ''Great Hymn to the Aten'', composed by Pharaoh Akhenaten; the Hurrian ''Hy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mackay, Queensland
} Mackay () is a city in the Mackay Region on the eastern or Coral Sea coast of Queensland, Australia. It is located about north of Brisbane, on the Pioneer River. Mackay is described as being in either Central Queensland or North Queensland, as these regions are not precisely defined. More generally, the area is known as the Mackay–Whitsunday Region. Mackay is nicknamed the sugar capital of Australia because its region produces more than a third of Australia's sugar. Name The city was named after John Mackay. In 1860, he was the leader of an expedition into the Pioneer Valley. Initially Mackay proposed to name the river Mackay River after his father George Mackay. Thomas Henry Fitzgerald surveyed the township and proposed it was called Alexandra after Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who married Prince Edward (later King Edward VII). However, in 1862 the river was renamed to be the Pioneer River, after in which Queensland Governor George Bowen travelled to the area, and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
