Mota language

Mota
Spoken in	Vanuatu
Region	Mota island
Native speakers	750[1]  (date missing)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Vanuatu Northern Vanuatu East Vanuatu Mota
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mtt

Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu.

History

During the period 1840-1940, Mota was used as a missionary lingua franca throughout areas of Oceania included in the Melanesian Mission, an Anglican missionary agency. Mota was used on Norfolk Island, in religious education; on other islands with different vernacular languages, it served as the language of liturgical prayers, hymns, and some other religious purposes.

Robert Henry Codrington compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with George Sarawia and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language.

Phonology

Mota has 5 phonemic vowels, /i e a o u/.^[2]

Notes

1. ^ Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Mota
2. ^ François (2005:445, 460).

References

• Codrington, Robert H.; Palmer, Jim (1896), A Dictionary of the Language of Mota, Sugarloaf Island, Banks' Islands, with a short grammar and index, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, http://www.archive.org/details/dictionaryoflang00codruoft 

• François, Alexandre (2005), "Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages", Oceanic Linguistics 44 (2): 443–504, http://alex.francois.free.fr/data/AlexFrancois_VowelsNorthernVanuatu_OL44-2.pdf 

External links

• Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Mota
• Texts in Mota from Project Canterbury
• Ethnologue page