Ninde, or Labo (also ''Nide, Meaun, Mewun'') is an Oceanic language 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 ...

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 ...

. 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 voic ...

.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. ...

'',

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 nouns 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: ...

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. *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 {{SOceanic-lang-stub