Northeast Malakula, or Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin, is a

dialect chain A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

spoken on the islands of

Uripiv Uripiv Island is a small inhabited island in Malampa Province of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean. Uripiv lies off the north coast of Malekula Island. The estimated terrain elevation above the sea level is some 8 meters. Population As of 2015, the of ...

Wala __NOTOC__ Wala may refer to: Places *Wala (island), a small island in Vanuatu, and a popular destination for cruise ships * Wala, Panama, a community in Kuna de Wargandí, Panama *Kingdom of Wala a pre-colonial polity in the north of modern Ghana ...

Rano Rano is a Local Government Area and headquarters of Rano Emirate council in Kano State, Nigeria. Rano is a local government area in Kano State with administrative headquarters in the town of Rano. Rano local government area is a Hausa-Fulani com ...

, and

Atchin Atchin is an islet off the north-eastern coast of Malakula 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 Pac ...

and on the mainland opposite to these islands. Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin is spoken today by about 9,000 people. Literacy rate of its speakers in their own language is 10–30%. Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin forms a

. The Uripiv dialect is the most southerly of these and has 85% of its words in common with Atchin, the most northerly dialect. Uripiv is spoken on the north-east coast of

Malakula Malakula Island, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean. Location Malakula is separated from the islands of Espiritu Santo and Malo by ...

. The Uripiv dialect is one of the few documented languages that use the rare

bilabial trill The voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\. Features Features of the voiced ...

, a feature that is not found in the Atchin dialect.

References

Further reading