Emae, or ''Fakamae'', is a
Polynesian outlier language of
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 ...
.
Introduction
Population
The language of Emae is spoken in the villages of Makatea and Tongamea on
Emae
Emae is an island in the Shepherd Islands, Shefa, Vanuatu.
Geography
Maunga Lasi is the highest peak at 644 m. It forms the northern rim of the (mostly) underwater volcano of Makura, which also covers the nearby islands of Makura and Mataso. I ...
in the country of
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 ...
. Most of the Emae people speak Emae,
North Efate (Nguna), English, French and Bislama. Less than 1% of the people who speak Emae as their native language are literate in the language, while 50% to 70% are literate in their second language, whether it be Nguna, English, French or Bislama. Today, only around 400 people speak Emae, mainly in Makatea and Tongamea, 250 more than in the 1960s - around 150 speakers. According to Lewis, Emae is still underused by many of the people in the area, but 50% of children know and speak Emae (2014), and children speaking Emae will help the language thrive.
Classification
Emae belongs to the large group of
Austronesian language, which contains more than 1200 languages. Emae is part of the
Samoic-Outliers node also known as
Polynesian Outliers
Polynesian is the adjectival form of Polynesia. It may refer to:
* Polynesians, an ethnic group
* Polynesian culture, the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia
* Polynesian mythology, the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia
* Polyn ...
. The Emae is part of the
Futunic group and all nine languages part of this node are the immediate sister languages of Emae. The Futunic group comes from languages linked to the island of
Futuna.
Sounds
Consonants
:
According to Capell (1962), “
appears, but is a variant of
and sometimes
Not classified as
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
.”
Vowels
Emae is typologically unusual in that the historical back vowels *u and *o are no longer distinguished from *i and *e by being back vowels, but only in being rounded. (They do still occur as back vowels, but they are variable, and more often are front vowels, sometimes more front than /i/ and /e/.) This asymmetrical distribution is not found in neighboring languages. The round vowels, now and , overlap and may be in the process of merging.
[Amy Dewar & Bill Palmer (2021) 'Loss of distinctive front-back parameter in Fakamae (Vanuatu): a phonetic study'. 15th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics.]
Syllable structure and stress
To create a syllable in "Emae" the pattern is vowel or consonant-vowel only. The V and the CV pattern is shown in "Polynesian, generally neighboring
Melanesian languages In linguistics, Melanesian is an obsolete term referring to the Austronesian languages of Melanesia: that is, the Oceanic, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, or Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages apart from Polynesian and Micronesian. A typ ...
except, "Makura"." Consonant-consonant sounds don't happen, so the sounds
b dand
ware said to be single, pre-nasalized phonemes.
When placing stress in a word the stress is usually placed on the
antepentultimate syllable. An example antepenultimate word is "nanafi", with the stress on "na".
Grammar
Basic word order
Capell says the syntactic pattern of "Emae" is Melanesian, and can be shown by the comparison between the sentence pattern of
Maori and Emae (1962).
The pattern that Maori, a Polynesian language, follows is the VSO. Capell puts the structures in term of actor, predicate and goal. The actor is the subject, the predicate the verb phrase and the goal is the object of the sentence. Emae follows the SVO pattern, which is the structure that most Melanesian languages use.
Reduplication
Reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
in "Emae" is not as common as it is in other Polynesian languages. Most of the reduplication in "Emae" is a loan from other languages located around "Emae". In Capell’s book he states that there is presence of both noun and verb reduplication in Emae (1962).
Noun Reduplication
*tui - "needle"
*tuitui - "sew"
Verb Reduplication (Loan from Nguna)
*lae - "rejoice"
*laelaea - "rejoicing"
Vocabulary
Indigenous vocabulary
Most words in the ‘’Emae’’ language are general Polynesian words:
*afi - "fire"
*ariki - "chief
*boŋiboŋi - "tomorrow"
*fafine - "female"
*fare - "house"
*po:ki - "to beg; beesech"
*roto - "inside 'heart'"
Homophones
The
homophones
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
are regarded as interesting in Emae because, some of the time, one word is a general Polynesian word yet the other comes from another Pacific language.
GP=General Polynesian
*ara
# GP "road, path"
# GP "wake up"
*fia
# GP "how many?"
# GP "desire; want"
*fua
# Maori "to give"
# GP "egg"
*po
# Nguna "then; and then"
# GP "night"
*rima
# GP "hand"
# GP "five"
Endangerment
When trying to classify a language as endangered, linguists have to take into account other aspects of the language’s uses in the area it is spoken. The use of the language in the daily life of the Emae people is an important piece of information in determining Emae's level of endangerment. According to Lewis, Emae is used in most domains (2014), yet this is a very vague statement because it does not specify the domains it refers to. This information can cause skeptics to have a different point of view. One domain in which a language might be used is at a religious gathering. While use in religious ceremony can be a way to preserve a language, there is no documentation of the Emae people using their language in this type of domain. For example in one of the villages, "Makata" or "Natanga", the title of the hymnals was in Tongoan (Capell, 1962). Tongoan is small language no longer spoken on Emae located on the island of
Tongoa
Tongoa Island is an inhabited island in Shefa Province of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean.
Geography
Tongoa is the largest island of Shepherd Islands archipelago. The island is heavily vegetated and shows geothermal activity. Tongoa is of recent vol ...
. The second source came from a
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
video of a VHS recording of a small congregation of Emae people singing a gospel song. Instead of using Emae the people were singing in
Bislama
Bislama (; ; also known by its earlier French name, ) is an English-based creole language and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" (citizens who live in Port Vila and Luganville) ...
, one of the official languages of Vanuatu. This presents another issue with the lack of documentation of Emae, as there are no audio recordings of the language. There is a small elementary school located in Emae called "Nofo" School, but it is unlikely that the language is taught there, as it is more popular to learn one of three official languages, which are spoken in the college on
Efate
Efate (french: Éfaté) is an island in the Pacific Ocean which is part of the Shefa Province in Vanuatu. It is also known as Île Vate.
Geography
It is the most populous (approx. 66,000) island in Vanuatu. Efate's land area of makes it Vanua ...
. The use of official languages over indigenous languages and the lack of documentation of Emae are contributing factors to the endangered state of the language. There isn’t any sign that Emae people have kept up with modern technology, or even radios, which would be a perfect domain to help the language spread and survive.
Inter-generational transfer, or the transferring of a language to a younger generation, is also a predictor of a language's vitality. According to Lewis, the language is used by 50% of the children (2014),which is a positive sign for the language, as the children will help keep the language alive. In Capell’s book Reverend Herwell says that “The population figures for
akata and Natangaare together now 157 (1962).” With about 400-500 speakers recorded in 2001 the total number of Emae speakers more than doubled in over forty years, which supports that children of Emae have and still are learning the language, keeping Emae alive.
Citations
*Capell, A. (1962). ''The Polynesian language of Mae (Emwae), New Hebrides''. Auckland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand.
*Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2013. ''Ethonlogue: Languages of the World'', Seventeenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version
ethnologue.com
*Sato, H., & Terrell, J. (2012). ''Language in Hawai'i and the Pacific; Class Reader''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii at Manoa.
References
{{Austronesian languages
Futunic languages
Polynesian outliers
Languages of Vanuatu