Ndrumbea language
Ndrumbea | |
---|---|
Naa Dubea | |
Native to | New Caledonia |
Region | Southern tip outside Nouméa (Paita on the west coast, Ounia on the east coast) |
Native speakers | (2,000 cited 1996 census)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | duf |
Glottolog | dumb1241 |
Ndrumbea is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Ndrumbea, variously spelled Ndumbea, Dubea, Drubea and Païta, is a New Caledonian language that gave its name to the capital of New Caledonia, Nouméa, and the neighboring town of Dumbéa. It has been displaced to villages outside the capital, with fewer than a thousand speakers remaining. Gordon (1995) estimates that there may only be two or three hundred. The Dubea are the people; the language has been called Naa Dubea (or more precisely Ṇã́ã Ṇḍùmbea) "language of Dubea".
Ndrumbea is one of the few Austronesian languages that is tonal, and it has a series of consonants that are also unusual for the region.
Phonology
Ndrumbea, like its close relative
Vowels
Ndrumbea has seven oral vowels, long and short. The mid front vowels are lower when short than long: /i e ɛ a o ʊ u/; /iː ɪː eː aː oː ʊː uː/. There are five nasal vowels, also long and short: /ĩ ẽ ã õ ũ/; /ĩː ẽː ãː õː ũː/. These interact with nasal consonants, described below. Back vowels do not occur after labialized consonants, /ŋ/, or /ɣ/. In addition to the complementary correlation of nasal vowels with nasal consonants, nasal vowels do not occur after /j, ɽ, ɣ/. /ɣ/–oral vowel derives historically from ŋ–nasal vowel.
Phonetically, a stop–flap consonant cluster will be separated by an obscure
Front | Central | Back | ||||||||||
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oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |||||||
short
|
long
|
short
|
long
|
short
|
long
|
short
|
long
|
short
|
long
|
short
|
long
| |
Close | i | iː
|
ĩ | ĩː
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u | uː
|
ũ | ũː
| ||||
Near-close | ɪː
|
ʊ | ʊː
|
|||||||||
Close-mid | e | eː
|
ẽ | ẽː
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o | oː
|
õ | õː
| ||||
Open-mid | ɛ | ɛ̃ | ||||||||||
Open | a | aː
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ã | ãː
|
Consonants
Nasal vowels once contrasted after
Labial | Dental/Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | labialized
|
Apical | Laminal | plain | labialized | |||
Nasal | m ~ ᵐb | ᵐbʷ
|
n ~ ⁿd
|
ɳ ~ ᶯɖ | n̠ ~ ⁿd̠
|
ŋ ~ ᵑɡ | ŋʷ ~ ᵑɡʷ | |
Plosive | prenasalized
| |||||||
voiceless
|
p | pʷ | t
|
ʈ | t̠
|
k | kʷ | |
Fricative
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v | ɣ | ||||||
Approximant | ɽ ~ ɻ | j | w |
The fricatives /v, ɣ/ are sometimes realized as approximants [ʋ, ɰ]. However, the approximants /w, j/ are never fricated. The nasal stop /n̠/ sometimes has incomplete closure, producing a nasalized approximant [ȷ̃]. The /ɽ/ is most often a tap [ɽ], sometimes an approximant [ɻ], and occasionally an alveolar tap or trill, [ɾ] or [r]. It does not occur word initially, and does not contrast with /ɳ/ word medially. It tends to be nasalized before a nasal vowel, [ɽ̃] ~ [ɳ̆] ~ [ɻ̃] with the nasality spreading to preceding vowels: /t̠ɽáɽẽ/ "to run" has been recorded as [t̠áɽ̃ã́ɻ̃ẽ].
Ndrumbea contrasts three
References
- Ndrumbea language alphabet and pronunciation at Omniglot
- ^ Ndrumbea at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- Gordon, Matthew; Ian Maddieson (October 1995). "The phonetics of Ndumbea". Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages III (91). UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics: 25–44.
- Rivierre, Jean-Claude (1973). Phonologie comparée des dialectes de l'extrême-sud de la Nouvelle Calédonie. Paris: Société d'études linguistiques et anthropologiques de Franc. p. 206.
- Shintani T. L. A. & Païta Y. (1990a) Grammaire de la langue de Païta. Nouméa: Sociéte d'Etudes Historiques de Nouvelle-Calédonie.
- Shintani T. L. A. & Païta Y. (1990b) Dictionnaire de la langue de Païta. Nouméa: Sociéte d'Etudes Historiques de Nouvelle-Calédonie.