Ndrumbea, variously spelled Ndumbea, Dubea, Drubea and Païta, is a New Caledonian language that gave its name to the capital of New Caledonia,

Nouméa Nouméa () is the capital and largest city of the French special collectivity of New Caledonia and is also the largest francophone city in Oceania. It is situated on a peninsula in the south of New Caledonia's main island, Grande Terre, and ...

, and the neighboring town of Dumbéa. It has been displaced to villages outside the capital, with fewer than a thousand speakers remaining. Gordon (1995) estimates that there may only be two or three hundred. The Dubea are the people; the language has been called Naa Dubea (or more precisely Ṇã́ã Ṇḍùmbea) "language of Dubea". Ndrumbea is one of the few Austronesian languages that is tonal, and it has a series of consonants that are also unusual for the region.

Phonology

Ndrumbea, like its close relative Numee, is a tonal language, with three contrasting tones, high, mid, and low.

Vowels

Ndrumbea has seven oral vowels, long and short. The mid front vowels are lower when short than long: . There are five

nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced with ...

s, also long and short: . These interact with nasal consonants, described below. Back vowels do not occur after labialized consonants, , or . In addition to the complementary correlation of nasal vowels with nasal consonants, nasal vowels do not occur after . –oral vowel derives historically from –nasal vowel. Phonetically, a stop–flap consonant cluster will be separated by an obscure epenthetic vowel with the quality of the following phonemic vowel.

Consonants

Nasal vowels once contrasted after

nasal stop In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majori ...

s, as they still do in Numee. However, in Ndrumbea, nasal stops partially denasalized before oral vowels, so that now

prenasalized stop Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather ...

s precede oral vowels, and nasal stops precede nasal vowels. Similarly, only occurs before oral vowels. The fricatives are sometimes realized as approximants . However, the approximants are never fricated. The nasal stop sometimes has incomplete closure, producing a nasalized approximant . The is most often a tap , sometimes an approximant , and occasionally an alveolar tap or trill, or . It does not occur word initially, and does not contrast with word medially. It tends to be nasalized before a nasal vowel, with the nasality spreading to preceding vowels: "to run" has been recorded as . Ndrumbea contrasts three coronal places, articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue contacting the roof of the mouth: , , and their nasal homologs. is

apical Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to: *Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology) *Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features loc ...

, in contrast to

laminal A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...

. It is not clear if is apico-dental or

denti-alveolar In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, ...

, but it has a sharp release burst. , on the other hand, has a noisy release and approaches an affricate, . It may actually be closer to an alveolar than post-alveolar, and appears to be enunciated more forcefully than . also has a fricated release, and for many speakers this is longer than that of .

References

Ndrumbea language alphabet and pronunciation
at ''Omniglot'' * *Shintani T. L. A. & Païta Y. (1990a) Grammaire de la langue de Païta. Nouméa: Sociéte d'Etudes Historiques de Nouvelle-Calédonie. *Shintani T. L. A. & Païta Y. (1990b) Dictionnaire de la langue de Païta. Nouméa: Sociéte d'Etudes Historiques de Nouvelle-Calédonie. {{Austronesian languages New Caledonian languages Languages of New Caledonia Tonal languages in non-tonal families