Mele-Fila (Ifira-Mele) is a

Polynesian language The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...

spoken in

Mele Mele () is a ''Comune'' (Municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Genoa in the Italian region Liguria, located about west of Genoa. Mele borders the following municipalities: Genoa, Masone Masone ( or ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the ...

and

Ifira Ifira is an offshore island of efate located in Shefa Province of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean. Geography Ifira lies off the coast of Efate Island in Vila harbour. Ifira spans about from the north to the south and from the east to the west. Th ...

on the island of Efate 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 Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...

. In spite of their differences, Mele and Fila are two dialects of the same language and are mutually intelligible. French and English are also fairly common among the residents of Efate. Mele-Fila is an everyday language for residents of Mele village and Fila Island. Mele village, with a population of 1,000, is located roughly 7 km north-west of

Port Vila Port Vila (french: Port-Vila), or simply Vila (; french: Vila; bi, Vila ), is the capital and largest city of Vanuatu. It is located on the island of Efate. Its population in the last census (2009) was 44,040, an increase of 35% on the pr ...

, the nation’s capital. Fila Island, with a population of 400, is located about 1.5km west of Vila.

History

Based on archaeological evidence, it is understood that peoples speaking Austronesian languages originated on the island of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

about 6000 years ago. Some of their descendants formed the Lapita civilisation, who sailed to

Remote Oceania Remote Oceania is the part of Oceania settled within the last 3,000 to 3,500 years, comprising south-eastern Island Melanesia and islands in the open Pacific east of the Solomon Islands: Fiji, Micronesia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Polynesia, t ...

, including

, roughly 3,200 years ago.Bedford, Stuart; Spriggs, Matthew. 2008
Northern Vanuatu as a Pacific Crossroads: The Archaeology of Discovery, Interaction, and the Emergence of the "Ethnographic Present"
''Asian Perspectives'' 47 (1), 95-120. The population of Mele-Fila belongs to the ''

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 ...

'', who historically came from Central Polynesia (Tonga, Samoa) during the last two millennia.

Phonology

This language is unusual among Polynesian languages for its phoneme /tɕ/. In the Fila dialect, /p/ and /m/ are not distinct from their

labialized Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...

counterparts. Mele vowels are similar to other Polynesian vowels as there are /i e a o u/ long and short. More than half of the words used in the language hail from Proto Polynesian language. Stressed initial vowels were kept, while unstressed initial vowels were removed. :"Ex: English: then, Mele: gafuru, PPN: angafulu" :"Ex: English: yesterday, Mele: nanafi, PPN: ananafi" Articles and verbal particles with unstressed long vowels often have their unstressed vowel shortened: :Ex: ruú ́́are - “The two houses” :Ex: ru pókasi - “the two pigs”

Consonant clusters In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

(strings of consonants without a vowel) exist, but can only be formed from these three combinations: # a

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...

and an

obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...

# a

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

and a

stop Stop may refer to: Places * Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck d ...

, # an obstruent and a nasal.

Word stress In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...

usually falls on the second-to-last syllable. Mele-Fila words usually contain at least three vowels. Similar to many Polynesian languages, this requires counting long vowels as two vowels. Mele-Fila has borrowed significantly from the Efate languages of

. It also borrowed from

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and French via

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 Vanuatu's national languages and

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

. This has caused its

syllable structure A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...

to allow (C)VC consonants as well as (C)V. Consonants can be

geminated In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...

(vocally lengthened), which indicates that a noun is

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

Syntax

Mele-Fila has a Subject – Verb – Object sentence order.

Verbal particles

Below is a list of "verbal particles": * ''Ee'' – not of the future (past or current) * * ''Tee'' – intentional (could also mean immediate future) * * ''Too'' (''roo'' in 3rd person) – future * * ''Kuu'' – indicates of an action/event * * ''Kaa'' – used when communicating to relatives below your social standing * * ''Kee'' (uncommon)- hypothetical * * Negation marker used post verb /kee/ (more common) * * Negation marker used pre-verb /see/ only used with ee or tee verbal particles * * Loose possession- used for actual ownership and some family relationships (possessed + ''n(a)'' + Possessor) * * Intimate possession – relation between parts/wholes and certain family relations * * ''Noki'' – frequent/habitual (always)

External links

* Materials on Mele-Fila are included in the open access

Arthur Capell Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages. Early life Capell was born in Newtown, New South Wales ...

collections
AC1
an
AC2
held by

Paradisec The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to ...

. * *
History of Polynesian Languages
*Bedford, Stuart; Spriggs, Matthew. "Northern Vanuatu as a Pacific Crossroads: The Archaeology of Discovery, Interaction, and the Emergence of the "ethnographic Present"". Asian Perspectives. University of Hawai'i Press. 47 (1): 95–120. JSTOR 42928734. *The Austronesian Languages By Robert Blust

*WALS Onlin

* The Commonwealth: http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/vanuatu/history *Nations Online: https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/vanuatu.htm *http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/vanuatu-population/

References

{{Austronesian languages Polynesian outliers Languages of Vanuatu Futunic languages