Gilbertese (), also known as Kiribati (sometimes Kirabatese or Tungaru), is an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati. It belongs to the Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages.
The word Kiribati, the current name of the islands, is the local adaptation of the European name "Gilberts" to Gilbertese phonology. Early European visitors, including Commodore John Byron, whose ships happened on Nikunau in 1765,Byron, J. & Clerke, C. (attributed to). (1767). A voyage round the world in His Majesty's Ship the ‘Dolphin’, commanded by the honourable commodore Byron. London: J. Newbery and F. Newbery. had named some of the islands the Kingsmill or Kings Mill Islands or for the Northern group les îles Mulgrave in FrenchHenry Evans Maude (1961). Post-Spanish discoveries in the central Pacific. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 67-111. Very often, this name applied only to the southern islands of the archipelago. Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam Webster, 1997. p. 594. but in 1820 they were renamed, in French, les îles Gilbert by Admiral Adam Johann von Krusenstern, after Captain Thomas Gilbert, who, along with Captain John Marshall, had passed through some of these islands in 1788. Frequenting of the islands by Europeans, Americans and Chinese dates from whaling and oil trading from the 1820s, when no doubt Europeans learnt to speak it, as Gilbertese learnt to speak English and other languages foreign to them. The first ever vocabulary list of Gilbertese was published by the French Revue coloniale (1847) by an auxiliary surgeon on corvette Le Rhin in 1845. His warship took on board a drift Gilbertese of Kuria, that they found near Tabiteuea. However, it was not until Hiram Bingham II took up missionary work on Abaiang in the 1860s that the language began to take on the written form known now.
Bingham was the first to translate the Bible into Gilbertese, and wrote several hymn books, a dictionary (1908, posthumous) and commentaries in the language of the Gilbert Islands. Alphonse Colomb, a French priest in Tahiti wrote in 1888, Vocabulaire arorai (îles Gilbert) précédé de notes grammaticales d'après un manuscrit du P. Latium Levêque et le travail de Hale sur la langue Tarawa / par le P. A. C.. Father Levêque named the Gilbertese Arorai (from Arorae) when Horatio Hale called them Tarawa. This work was also based on the first known description of Gilbertese in English, published in 1846, in the volume Ethnology and Philology of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, compiled by Horatio Hale.
The official name of the language is te taetae ni Kiribati, or 'the Gilbertese language', but the common name is te taetae n aomata, or 'the language of the people'.
The first complete and comprehensive description of this language was published in Dictionnaire gilbertin–français of Father Ernest Sabatier (981 pp, 1952–1954), a Catholic priest. It was later partially translated into English by Sister Olivia, with the help of the South Pacific Commission.
Speakers Over 96% of the 119,000 people living in Kiribati declare themselves I-Kiribati and speak Gilbertese. Gilbertese is also spoken by most inhabitants of Nui (Tuvalu), Rabi Island (Fiji), and some other islands where I-Kiribati have been relocated (Solomon Islands, notably Choiseul Province; and Vanuatu), after the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme or emigrated (to New Zealand and Hawaii mainly).
97% of those living in Kiribati are able to read in Gilbertese, and 80% are able to read English. It is one of the Oceanic languages. The largest individual Oceanic languages are Eastern Fijian with over 600,000 speakers, and Samoan with an estimated 400,000 speakers. The Gilbertese, Tongan, Tahitian, Māori, Western Fijian and Tolai (Gazelle Peninsula) languages each have over 100,000 speakers.
In 2020 Finlayson Park School in Auckland became the first school in New Zealand to set up a Gilbertese language unit, where Erika Taeang was employed as the teacher.
Countries by number of Gilbertese speakers Kiribati, 103,000 (2010 census) Fiji, 6,600 (2019) Solomon Islands, 6,800 (2012) New Zealand, 2,196 (2018 New Zealand census) Nauru, 1,500, then 500 cited 2011 Tuvalu, 100 (2002) Vanuatu, 400 United States of America (Hawaii), 141 (2010 US census)
Dialects The Gilbertese language has two main dialects, Northern and Southern. Their main differences are in the pronunciation of some sounds. The islands of Butaritari and Makin also have their own dialect that differs from the standard Kiribati in some vocabulary and pronunciation.
Dialect listing Banaban (Banaba and Rabi Island, Fiji) Northern Kiribati (Makin, Butaritari, Marakei, Abaiang, Tarawa, Maiana, Kuria, Abemama and Aranuka) Butaritari/Makin (Butaritari and Makin) Nuian (Tuvalu) Southern Kiribati (Tabiteuea, Onotoa, Nonouti, Beru, Nikunau, Tamana and Arorae)
Historical sound changes + Gilbertese reflexes of Proto-Oceanic consonants (in IPA) Proto-Oceanic Proto-Micronesian Gilbertese 1 2 2
1 Sometimes when reflecting Proto-Micronesian .2 Sometimes when reflecting Proto-Micronesian .
Phonology
Consonants +ConsonantsBilabialApicalVelarplainlabializedNasal Stop Continuant
All nasal consonants have geminated counterparts.
Vowels +Vowels Front Back Close Mid Open
All vowel qualities have long vowel counterparts. The pronunciation is closer to except after velarized and . describe the additional monophthongs and .
Length Length is distinctive for vowels and plain nasal consonants but not for the remaining sounds so that (third person singular article) contrasts with () as well as (). Other minimal pairs include:
+ Minimal pairs for vowel length Short Long Example IPA Translation Example IPA Translation ripe coconut pen we only full turtles bundle head to tell to tell him/her
Alphabet The Gilbertese language is written in the Latin script, which was introduced in the 1860s when Hiram Bingham Jr, a Protestant missionary, first translated the Bible into Gilbertese. Until then, the language was unwritten. Since the independence of Kiribati in 1979, long vowels and consonants are represented by doubling the character, as in Dutch and Finnish. A few digraphs are used for the velar nasals () and velarized bilabials (). Bingham and the first Roman Catholic missionaries (1888) did not indicate in their script the vowel length by doubling the character. The discrepancies between the Protestant and Roman Catholic spellings have been an issue since 1895.Alterations in spelling adopted by the Roman Catholic Mission. From: Swayne, British Resident C. R., at Suva, Fiji. WPHC 4/IV: Inwards correspondence, 1895., MSS & Archives.2003/1.WPHC 4/IV.1895. File 393/1895. Special Collections, The University of Auckland. https://archives.library.auckland.ac.nz/repositories/2/archival_objects/116412 Accessed July 27, 2020. Neither clearly distinguished the pronunciation of the vowel /a/ after velarized bilabials, like (bw) and (mw), which result in discrepancies between old scripts and modern scripts. For example, the word maneaba should be written mwaneaba or even mwaaneaba and the atoll of Makin, Mwaakin. The Kiribati Protestant Church has also recently used a different script for both velarized bilabials, “b’a” and “m’a”, which are found in Protestant publications. +Gilbertese spelling systemLetterAAABBWEEEIIIKMMMMWNNNNGNGGOOORTUUUWIPA
Grammar Gilbertese has a basic verb–object–subject word order (VOS).
Nouns Gilbertese lacks a morphological noun-marker system. This means that—by itself—a noun cannot be identified as such. However, singular nouns can be distinguished from other words, as they are preceded by the article "". However, not all singular nouns can take the article. These include names of people and places, words for cardinal directions, and other specific nouns.
Any noun can be formed from a verb or an adjective by preceding it with the article "".
(to go) (the going) (red) (the redness)
Nouns can be marked for possession (by person and number). Plurality is only marked in some nouns by lengthening the first vowel. Even then, the singular form might be used—despite plural referents—if no other indicators of their plurality are present.
(book) (books)
There is no obligatory marked gender. Sex or gender can be marked by adding (male) or (female) to the noun.
(chicken) (rooster) (writing is more usual) (hen) (writing is more usual) with possessive suffix -u, my. (my brother or my sister, if he or she has the same sex as the speaker) with the same possessive suffix. (my brother or my sister, if he or she has a different sex from the speaker)
For human nouns, the linker 'n' may be used.
(child) (boy) (girl)
Agent nouns can be created with the particle (singular) or (plural).
In Gilbertese, nouns can be classified as either animate or inanimate. The category of animate nouns includes humans and most animals, whereas inanimate nouns refer to all other entities.
Possession, when the possessor is inanimate, is marked with the "n" clitic. In writing, it may be joined with the previous word, or written separately. In cases where the "n" marker would be otherwise incompatible with the language's phonotactics, one might use "in" or "ni" instead. In phrases where the possessor is animate, a special possessive pronoun needs to be employed (see Pronouns).
Nouns can also be classified as alienable or inalienable. Inalienable nouns include, among others, parts of the body, family, and feelings. Words which are newly introduced into the language are never considered to be inalienable. The meanings of certain words may vary according to whether or not they are considered alienable.
Adjectives can also be formed from nouns by reduplication with the meaning of "abundant in", e.g., ("rain"), ("rainy").
Articles There are two articles used in Gilbertese: SingularPluraltetaian
Neither of them implies definiteness, therefore both can be translated as "a(n)" and "the".
When preceding collective nouns or names of substances, "" can be translated as "some." A limited set of nouns, typically referring to unique entities, dispense with . This includes words like “sun”, “sky”, “sea”, among others. Interestingly, , “God”, is an exception. The article also acts as a nominalizer, transforming adjectives into nouns. While marks singular nouns, the language possesses a plural article . However, its use is restricted to countable nouns inherently implying plurality. Collective nouns typically don't take . In certain situations, when plurality is evident from surrounding words, can be omitted.
+Personal articlesMasculineFemininePersonal articlete (tem, ten, teng) — Na Nan Nang form could be used in Butaritari and Makinnei
The personal articles are used before personal names. The masculine form is '' before names beginning with <i, u, w, b', ng>, '' before <b, m>, '' before <a, e, o, n, r, t> and '' before <k, (ng)>.
Pronouns Pronouns have different forms according to case: nominative (subject), accusative (object), emphatic (vocatives, adjunct pronouns), genitive (possessives).
Nominative Accusative Emphatic Genitive Possessivesuffixes 1stperson singular i, n -ai ngai au -u plural ti -ira ngaira ara -ra 2ndperson singular ko -ko ngkoe am -m plural kam -ngkamii ngkamii amii -mii 3rdperson singular e -a ngaia ana -na/n plural a -ia/i ngaiia aia -ia
Demonstratives The Gilbertese language employs a system of demonstratives to indicate the spatial proximity of the referent to the speaker. These demonstratives are postnominal, meaning they follow the noun they modify.