- Title
- Documentation of Ifira-Mele, a Polynesian Outlier of Vanuatu
- Creator
- Malau, Catriona
- Relation
- Documentation of Ifira-Mele, a Polynesian Outlier of Vanuatu. ( 2018-2023)
- Relation
- http://hdl.handle.net/2196/c4a5b212-4cf4-4e49-bab1-819ac28ef8d7
- Publisher
- Endangered Languages Archive
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Contained in this collection is documentation of the language known in the literature as Ifira-Mele or Mele-Fila. The language is represented by two dialects spoken by what today are two clearly distinct communities. One dialect is spoken on the island of Ifira or Fila (Vila) in Vila Bay, the bay in which Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, sits. This collection currently only includes recordings of the other dialect, Imere, spoken in the large village of Mele, less than 10km from Port Vila. This language is one of three Polynesian Outlier languages spoken in Vanuatu. Fakamae is also documented as part of the same ELDP funded project (http://hdl.handle.net/2196/a48b2822-5873-4c2e-839a-f8a36725358e). The third Polynesian Outlier of Vanuatu is spoken on the small islands of Futuna and Aniwa in the south of the country. This collection consists of data collected on field trips in 2018, 2019 and 2023, over a combined period of 6 months spent with the community. Within both dialect communities, there are a combined total of about 3,500 speakers of the language. This number is relatively large compared to many of the approximately 138 languages of Vanuatu. However, the language is threatened due to a number of factors, mostly due to the proximity of the communities to the capital, which means that means that members of the community are in contact with speakers of other languages and use Bislama, the lingua franca, much more often in their daily lives.
- Subject
- Ifira-Mele; Vanuatu; endangered languages; linguistics
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1519705
- Identifier
- uon:57420
- Language
- eng
- Reviewed
- Hits: 10
- Visitors: 10
- Downloads: 0