Lungalunga (Lunga Lunga), frequently though ambiguously called Minigir, is spoken by a small number of the Tolai people of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

, who live on the

Gazelle Peninsula The Gazelle Peninsula is a large peninsula in northeastern East New Britain, Papua New Guinea located on the island of New Britain within the Bismarck Archipelago, situated in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The Rabaul caldera is located on t ...

East New Britain East New Britain is a province of Papua New Guinea, consisting of the north-eastern part of the island of New Britain and the Duke of York Islands. The capital of the province is Kokopo, not far from the old capital of Rabaul, which was largely des ...

Province. It is often referred to in the

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

literature as the Tolai "dialect" with an /s/.

Classification

Lungalunga belongs to the

Ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...

ic branch of the Austronesian

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...

. The most immediate subgroup is the

Patpatar–Tolai The Meso-Melanesian languages are a linkage of Oceanic languages spoken in the large Melanesian islands of New Ireland and the Solomon Islands east of New Guinea. Bali is one of the most conservative languages. Composition The languages group ...

group of languages which also includes

Kuanua The Tolai language, or Kuanua, is spoken by the Tolai people of Papua New Guinea, who live on the Gazelle Peninsula in East New Britain Province. Nomenclature This language is often referred to in the literature as ''Tolai''. However, Tolai is ...

(also spoken on the Gazelle Peninsula) and

Patpatar Patpatar, or Gelik, is an Austronesian language spoken in New Ireland Province in Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( ...

(spoken on New Ireland). A "Tolai-Nakanai trade language" reported in the literature was apparently not a pidgin as assumed, but Minigir (Lungalunga) with perhaps some Meramera or Nakanai mixed in.Tom Dutton, "Other pidgins in Papua New Guinea", in Wurm et al. (1996) ''Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas,'' vol 1:216, fn 1

Geographic distribution

Lungalunga is spoken on Ataliklikun Bay, in the villages of Lungalunga, Kabaira and Vunamarita, located on the Gazelle Peninsula in the East New Britain Province of Papua New Guinea.

Grammar

Independent pronouns

Lungalunga pronouns have four

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

distinctions (singular, dual, trial and plural) and three

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...

distinctions (first, second and third) as well as an inclusive and exclusive distinction. There are no

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...

distinctions.

Syntax

The usual word order of Lungalunga is SVO.

References

* * {{Languages of Papua New Guinea St George linkage Languages of East New Britain Province