Ninde, or Labo (also ''Nide, Meaun, Mewun'') is an
Oceanic language
The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...
spoken by about 1,100 people in the
Southwest Bay area of
Malekula
Malakula Island, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean.
Location
Malakula is separated from the islands of Espiritu Santo and Malo by t ...
island, 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 ...
.
One unusual feature is that it has both a voiced and a voiceless
bilabial trill
The voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\.
Features
Features of the voiced ...
.
LINGUIST List 8.45: Bilabial trill
Linguistlist.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-08.
In popular culture
In an episode of the British television programme ''An Idiot Abroad
''An Idiot Abroad'' is a British travel documentary comedy television series broadcast on Sky One, as well as a series of companion books published by Canongate Books, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Karl Pilkington. T ...
'', Karl Pilkington
Karl Pilkington (born 23 September 1972) is an English presenter, comedian, actor, voice-artist, producer and author.
After working with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant as producer on their XFM radio show, Pilkington became a co-host of '' ...
meets the chief of a local tribe, who comments upon the Ninde language. He explains that “all the words of Ninde begin with /n/”, such as the word ''nimdimdip'' for palm tree, ''naho'' for fruit, or ''nuhuli'' for leaf. They then visit the grave of a woman who was named Nicola.
However, this general statement is actually not true. The only words of Ninde that start with /n/ are the inanimate common noun
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s of the language; the /n/ reflects an old nominal article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
which has been fused to the radical of these common nouns. As for the name ''Nicola'', which is a borrowed European name, it cannot be taken as representative of the Ninde language.
External links
* Materials on Nind
are included in a number of collections
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 ...
.
*ELAR collection
Ninde documentation and orthographic design project
deposited by Caroline Crouch
Notes
References
* Lynch, John and Crowley, Terry. 2001. ''Languages of Vanuatu: A New Survey and Bibliography''. Pacific Linguistics. Canberra: Australian National University.
Malekula languages
Languages of Vanuatu
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