Lovono (''Vano'', ''Alavano'', ''Alavana'') is a nearly extinct language of the island of
Vanikoro
Vanikoro (sometimes wrongly named ''Vanikolo'') is an island in the Santa Cruz group, located to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group. It is part of the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands.
The name ''Vanikoro'' is always used as thoug ...
in the easternmost province of the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...
. As of 2012, it is only spoken by four speakers;
[Homepage of the linguist A. François]
it has been
replaced by the island’s dominant language,
Teanu.
Name
The language name makes reference to an ancient village in the northwest of the island
Banie
Banie (formerly ) is a village in Gryfino County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-western Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Banie. It lies approximately south-east of Gryfino and south of the re ...
.
[.] In the language Lovono, which was once the dominant one in that area, the village was
called ''Alavana''. In Teanu, which is now the only language spoken by the modern population, the same village is
called ''Lovono''. This
language shift
Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceiv ...
is reflected in the people’s preference to use the Teanu form (i.e. Lovono) both for the village name and for the ancient language that used to be associated with it.
The same village – and hence the language – has been also spelled ''Whanou'' or ''Vano'' in the scientific literature, possibly reflecting an older pronunciation of the word.
The language
Some information on the languages of Vanikoro, including Lovono, can be found in for the grammar, and François (2021) for the lexicon.
[See also François (2022) for a general presentation.]
Notes
References
*
* —— (2021)
''Online Teanu–English dictionary'' with lexical data in Lovono and
Tanema. Paris, CNRS.
*
External links
Audio recordings in the Lovono language in open access, by A. François
(source: ''Pangloss Collection
The Pangloss Collection is a digital library whose objective is to store and facilitate access to audio recordings in endangered languages of the world. Developed by the LACITO centre of CNRS in Paris, the collection provides free online access ...
'' of CNRS
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...
).
Languages of the Solomon Islands
Temotu languages
Endangered Austronesian languages
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