Volow (formerly known as ''Valuwa'' or ''Valuga'') is an
Oceanic
Oceanic may refer to:
*Of or relating to the ocean
*Of or relating to Oceania
**Oceanic climate
**Oceanic languages
**Oceanic person or people, also called "Pacific Islander(s)"
Places
* Oceanic, British Columbia, a settlement on Smith Island, ...
language variety which used to be spoken in the area of
Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of
Motalava, 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 ...
.
Name
The name ''Volow'' is originally a placename: it corresponds to the area known as
Aplow, but in the local language Volow rather than in Mwotlap. This form, pronounced , is derived from
Proto-Torres-Banks *''βaluwa''.
In neighboring
Mwotlap
Mwotlap (pronounced ; formerly known as ''Motlav'') is an Oceanic language spoken by about 2,100 people in Vanuatu. The majority of speakers are found on the island of Motalava in the Banks Islands, with smaller communities in the islands of Ra ...
, the same area is called ''Aplow'' (with locative prefix ''a-''), and in
Mota Mota, MOTA or variations thereof may refer to:
Geography
* Mota (island), Vanuatu
* Mota, Ethiopia, a town
* Mota, Gujarat, India, a town
* Mota, Ljutomer, Slovenia, a village
Music
* ''M.O.T.A.'' (album), a 2005 album by Cultura Profética
* ...
, it is called ''Valuwa'' . Both of these are nowadays used as alternative names for the area.
Sociolinguistics
Volow has
receded historically in favour of the now dominant language
Mwotlap
Mwotlap (pronounced ; formerly known as ''Motlav'') is an Oceanic language spoken by about 2,100 people in Vanuatu. The majority of speakers are found on the island of Motalava in the Banks Islands, with smaller communities in the islands of Ra ...
.
It is now only remembered by a single passive speaker, who lives in the village of
Aplow — the new name of what was previously known as Volow.
The similarity of Volow with Mwotlap is such that the two
communalects may be considered
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
s of a single language.
Phonology
Volow
phonemically contrasts 16 consonants and 7 vowels.
[ François (2021).]
Consonants
:
This consonant inventory includes a typologically rare consonant: a
rounded,
prenasalised voiced labial-velar plosive
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
:
[.] e.g. “woman” (spelled ''n-leq̄evēn'' in the local orthography).
Historically, Volow is the only daughter language to have preserved the voicing of the proto-phonemes ''*ᵑg'' > /ᵑɡ/ and ''*ᵐbʷ'' > /ᵑᵐɡ͡bʷ/, which is reconstructed for its ancestor
Proto-Torres-Banks. Most of its neighbours (including Mwotlap)
devoiced these to /k/ and /k͡pʷ/ respectively.
Vowels
The seven vowels of Volow are all short
monophthong
A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
s:
[.]
:
External links
Presentation of the Volow language by linguist
A. François. Access to the Volow corpus
(''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).
A story in Volow presented in bilingual (Volow–French) format, with audio recording(''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). This story was recorded by anthropologist Bernard Vienne in 1969 from the last fluent speaker Wanhand
1986 and was translated by A. François in 2003, with the help of Wanhand's son.
Notes
References
*
*
* .
*
*
*
Banks–Torres languages
Languages of Vanuatu
Torba Province
Endangered Austronesian languages
{{Vanuatu-stub