- Drehu language
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Drehu Spoken in Lifou, New Caledonia Native speakers 11,338 (1996 census) (date missing) Language family Austronesian- Malayo-Polynesian
- Oceanic
- Southern Oceanic
- New Caledonian – Loyalties
- Loyalty Islands
- Drehu
- Loyalty Islands
- New Caledonian – Loyalties
- Southern Oceanic
- Oceanic
Language codes ISO 639-3 dhv This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. Drehu ([ɖehu]; also known as Dehu,[1] Lifou,[2] Lifu,[3] qene drehu[4]) is an Austronesian language mostly spoken on Lifou Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. It has about twelve-thousand fluent speakers and the status of a French regional language. This status means that pupils can take it as an optional topic for the baccalauréat in New Caledonia itself or French mainland.[5] It has been also taught at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris since 1973 and at the University of New Caledonia since 2000. As for other Kanak languages, Drehu is now regulated by the "Académie des langues kanak", officially founded in 2007.
There is also a respective register in Drehu, called qene miny.[6] In time past, this was used to speak to the chiefs (joxu). Today very few people still know and practice this language.
Contents
Phonology
Vowels
Front Central Back High i iː u uː Mid e eː ø øː o oː Open æ æː ɑ ɑː Consonants
Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Retroflex Alveopalatal Velar Glottal Stops and
affricatesVoiceless p t ʈ t͡ʃ k Voiced (b) d ɖ (d͡ʒ) ɡ Nasals Voiceless m̥ n̥ ɲ̊ ŋ̊ Voiced m n ɲ ŋ Fricatives Voiceless f θ s x h Voiced (v) ð z Laterals Voiceless l̥ Voiced l Semivowels Voiceless ʍ Voiced w /b d͡ʒ v/ occur only in loanwords.
Writing system
Drehu was first written in the Latin alphabet by the Polynesian[7] and English missionaries of the London Missionary Society during the 1840s, with the help of the natives. The first complete Bible was published in 1890. The bible writing system didn't distinguish between the dental (written "d", "t") and the alveolar/retroflex ("dr" and "tr") consonants, which for a long time were written indifferently "d" and "t". In drehu θ and ð are not dental but interdental consonants. The new writing system was created during the 1970s.
Grammar
Personal pronouns
Singular
- Eni/ni : I, me
- Eö/ö : you
- Nyipë/nyipëti : you (a polite form of address to a chief (joxu)or an older man)
- Nyipo/nyipot(i) : you (a polite form of address to an older woman)
- Angeic(e) : he, him, she
- Nyidrë/nyidrët(i) : he, him (a polite form of address to a chief (joxu)or an older man)
- Nyidro/nyidrot(i) : you (a polite form of address to an older woman)
- Ej(e) : it
Dual
- Eaho/ho : we two (exclusive)
- Easho/sho (easo/so) : we two (inclusive)
- Epon(i)/pon(i) : you two
- Eahlo : they two
- Lue ej(e) : they two for things and animals
Plural
- Eahun(i)/hun(i) : we, us (exclusive)
- Eashë/shë, easë/së : we all, all of us (inclusive)
- Epun(i)/pun(i) : you
- Angaatr(e) : they, them
- Itre ej(e) : they , them (for things and animals)
Notes
- ^ In missionary time
- ^ In french
- ^ In english
- ^ Qene means language (literally "qe" : mouth, "ne" : of)
- ^ Only five of the twenty-eight Kanak languages (in the 1999 Rapport Cerquilini or 40 according to the Académie des langues kanak) have this status: Drehu (island of Lifou), Nengone (island of Maré), A'jië (around Houaïlou), Paicĩ (around Poindimié) and Xaracuu (around Canala and Thio).
- ^ As Maurice Leenhardt did ("Langues et dialectes de l'Austro Mélanésie" (1946), the Académie considers qene miny not only as a respective register but also a distinct language
- ^ Most were from the Cook Islands.
Bibliography
- (French) Notes Grammaticales sur la langue de Lifu (Loyaltys). Paris. 1882.
- (English) Ray, Sidney H. (Jul.–Dec. 1917). "The People and Language of Lifu, Loyalty Islands". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland) 47: 239–322. doi:10.2307/2843343. JSTOR 2843343.
- (English) Walsh, D. T. (1967). Dehu Grammar. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- (French) Le drehu, langue de Lifou (Iles Loyauté): phonologie, morphologie, syntaxe. ISBN 2-85297-142-9
- (French) Maurice Lenormand, Dictionnaire de la langue de Lifou. Le Qene Drehu, 1999, Nouméa, Le Rocher-à-la-Voile, 533p
- (English) Tryon, Darrell T. English-Dehu Dictionary, Pacific Linguistics, 1971. ISBN 0858830590
- (English) Tryon, Darrell T. Dehu-English Dictionary, Pacific Linguistics, 1971.
External links
- Read and listen to a traditional narrative in Drehu, in trilingual version (homepage of French CNRS-Lacito).
Categories:- Language articles with undated speaker data
- Loyalty Islands languages
- Malayo-Polynesian
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