Erromanga language
| Sie | |
|---|---|
| Erromangan | |
| Region | Southern Vanuatu |
|
Native speakers
|
1,900 (2001) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | siee1239 |
Erromango Island
|
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Erromangan, or Sie (Sye), is the primary language spoken on the island Erromango in the Tafea region of the Vanuatu islands. The other Erromanga languages are either moribund or extinct. Although the island is quite large (887 km²), the total number of speakers of Erromango is estimated at around 1900.
Sye is close to being the only language on Erromango. There were once four—Sye, Sorung, Ura and Utaha—but the latter three are extinct apart from a handful of recently discovered Ura speakers. Terry Crowley counted six speakers of Ura in the mid-1990s. The South Vanuatu language group includes these four languages.
Erromango Island was once much more diverse linguistically. In the nineteenth century a massive depopulation took place and the languages were realigned. Terry Crowley states that there would have been three different languages prior to European contact.
The earliest published account of Erromangan languages is Gordon (1889), whose notes, which he took on the island, were published posthumously. Capell produced a description of the language in the 1920s on the basis of the same materials that were used before by Ray, another scholar. This sketch was never published but it is referred to in detail, however, in unpublished correspondence dated 1927 from Dempwolff to Ray, so he obviously had copies passed on to others.
John Lynch gathered new material from speakers of Erromangan in the 1960s and 1970s. A description combining the resources of both his and Capell’s work was felt to be feasible and a detailed grammatical sketch was published by Lynch and Capell. Capell’s description bases on translated sources, while Lynch’s notes base on the spoken language. They published in 1983 and made clear that their work had to be regarded as provisional and to be supplemented.
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Wikipedia