- Wallisian language
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- This article deals with the language of Wallis Island, "Wallisian," also known as "Fakauvea" or "East Uvean." For the similarly named language of Ouvéa, New Caledonia, see West Uvean (Fagauvea).
Wallisian Fakaʻuvea Spoken in Wallis and Futuna Native speakers 29,800 (2000) Language family Austronesian- Malayo-Polynesian
- Oceanic
- Polynesian
- Rennellese?
- Wallisian
- Rennellese?
- Polynesian
- Oceanic
Language codes ISO 639-3 wls 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. Wallisian or ʻUvean (Wallisian: Fakaʻuvea) is the Polynesian language spoken on Wallis Island (also known as ʻUvea). The language is also known as East Uvean to distinguish it from the related West Uvean spoken on the outlier island of Ouvéa (near New Caledonia). Wallisian tradition holds that the latter island was colonised from Wallis Island in ancient times.
Wallisian may be most closely related to Rennellese.
Contents
Alphabet
The standard 5 vowels: a, e, i, o, u, with their lengthened variants: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū.
The consonants: f, g (always pronounced as ŋ (ng)), h, k, l, m, n, s (rare, usually from foreign words), t, v, '.
The ʻ, representing the glottal stop (see also okina), is known in Wallisian as fakamoga (belonging to the throat). The fakamoga is nowadays taught at schools, and can be written with straight, curly or inverted curly apostrophes. Similarly the macron (Wallisian: fakaloa, 'to lengthen') is now taught in schools to mark long vowels, even though the older generation has never marked the glottal stop or vowel length.
For example: Mālō te ma'uli (hello)
Vocabulary
Phoneme correspondences Phoneme Proto-Polynesian Tongan Samoan Wallisian English /ŋ/ *taŋata tangata tagata tagata person /s/ *sina hina sina hina grey (of hair) /ti/ *tiale siale tiale tiale Gardenia /k/ *waka vaka vaʻa vaka canoe /f/ *fafine fafine fafine fafine woman /ʔ/ *matuqa motuʻa matua matua parent /r/ *rua ua lua lua two /l/ *tolu tolu tolu tolu three References
External links
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- Wallis and Futuna
Categories:- Languages of Wallis and Futuna
- Samoic languages
- Austronesian language stubs
- Wallis and Futuna stubs
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