Gilbertese
Kiribati
Taetae ni Kiribati
Native toKiribati
EthnicityI-Kiribati
Native speakers
120,000 (2002–2019)[1]
Latin script
(Gilbertese alphabet)
Official status
Official language in
 Kiribati
Regulated byKiribati Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-2gil
ISO 639-3gil
Glottologgilb1244
Map showing the pre-colonial distribution of the Micronesian languages; Gilbertese-speaking region is shaded blue and does not include the Line Islands and Rabi in Fiji

Gilbertese or taetae ni Kiribati, also Kiribati (sometimes Kiribatese), 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, had named some of the islands the Kingsmill or Kings Mill Islands or for the Northern group les îles Mulgrave in French[2] 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 Kiribati 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[3] 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[4] 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.[3] 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.[5][6]

Countries by number of Gilbertese speakers

  1. Kiribati, 103,000 (2010 census)[1]
  2. Fiji, 6,600 (2019)[1]
  3. Solomon Islands, 6,800 (2012)[1]
  4. New Zealand, 2,196 (2018 New Zealand census)[7]
  5. Nauru, 1,500, then 500 cited 2011[8]
  6. Tuvalu, 100 (2002)[1]
  7. Vanuatu, 400
  8. Hawaii, 141 (2010 US census)

Linguistics and study

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

Historical sound changes

Gilbertese reflexes of Proto-Oceanic consonants[9] (in IPA)
Proto-Oceanic *mp*mp,ŋp*p*m*m,ŋm*k*ŋk*ŋ*j*w*t*s,nj*ns,j*j*nt,nd*d,R*l*n*ɲ
Proto-Micronesian *p*pʷ*f*m*mʷ*k*x*ŋ*j*w*t*T*s*S*Z*c*r*l*n*ɲ
Gilbertese *p*pˠ*∅*m*mˠ*k,∅1*∅*ŋ*∅*βˠ*t,∅2*t*t,s2*r*r*r*∅*n*n*n

1 Sometimes when reflecting Proto-Micronesian /t/.
2 Sometimes when reflecting Proto-Micronesian /k/.

Phonology

Gilbertese contrasts 13 consonants and 10 vowel sounds.[10]

Consonants
Bilabial Apical Velar
plain velarized
Nasal mː ⟨mm⟩ nː ⟨nn⟩ ŋː ⟨ngg⟩
m ⟨m⟩ mˠ ⟨mw⟩ n ⟨n⟩ ŋ ⟨ng⟩
Stop p[lower-roman 1] ⟨b⟩pˠ ⟨bw⟩t[lower-roman 2] ⟨t⟩k ⟨k⟩
Flap βˠ[lower-roman 3] ⟨w⟩ ɾ[lower-roman 4] ⟨r⟩
  1. ↑ Usually voiced intervocalically but also sometimes word-initially.[11]
  2. ↑ /t/ is lenited and assibilated to [s] before /i/.
  3. ↑ The labiovelar fricative /βˠ/ may be a flap or an approximant, depending on the context.[12]
  4. ↑ /ɾ/ does not occur in the syllable coda.[13]
Vowels
Front Back
Close[lower-roman 1] i iːu uː
Mid e eː[lower-roman 2]o oː
Open a aː[lower-roman 2]
  1. ↑ Short /i/ and /u/ may become semivowels [j] and [w] when followed by more sonorous vowels. /ie/ → [je] ('sail').[14] Kiribati has syllabic nasals, although syllabic /n/ and /ŋ/ can be followed only by consonants that are homorganic.[12]
  2. 1 2 Lee (2019) describes the additional monophthongs [ɛ] and [æ], for a total of 14 vowel sounds.[15]

The /a/ pronunciation is closer to [ä] except after velarized /mˠ/ and /pˠ/.

Quantity is distinctive for vowels and plain nasal consonants but not for the remaining sounds so that ana /ana/ (third person singular article) contrasts with aana /aːna/ (transl. its underside) as well as anna /anːa/ (transl. dry land). Other minimal pairs include:[12]

Minimal pairs for vowel length
Short Long
Example IPA Translation Example IPA Translation
//e// te ben /tepen/ ripe coconut te been /tepeːn/ pen
//i// ti /ti/ we tii /tiː/ only
//o// on /on/ full oon /oːn/ turtles
//u// te atu /atu/ bundle te atuu /atuː/ head
//a// tuanga /twaŋa/ to tell tuangnga /twaŋːa/ to tell him/her

Grammar

Gilbertese has a basic verb–object–subject word order (VOS).

Nouns

Any noun can be formed from a verb or an adjective by preceding it with the definite article "te".

  • nako (to go)
  • te nako (the going)
  • uraura (red)
  • te uraura (the redness)

Nouns can be marked for possession (by person and number). Plurality is only marked in some nouns by lengthening the first vowel.[16]

  • te boki (book)
  • booki (books)

There is no obligatory marked gender. Sex or gender can be marked by adding mmwaane (male) or aiine (female) to the noun.

  • te moa (chicken)
  • te moa mmwaane (rooster) (writing mwane is more usual)
  • te moa aiine (hen) (writing aine is more usual)
  • tariu[17] (my brother or my sister if he or she has the same sex of the speaker)
  • maneu[18] (my brother or my sister if he or she has a different sex of the speaker)

For human nouns, the linker 'n' may be used.

  • ataei (child)
  • ataeinimmwaane (boy)
  • ataeinnaiine (girl)

Agentive nouns can be created with the particle tia (singular) or taan(i) (plural).

Articles

Singular Plural
Articles te taian

The article 'te' is neither definite or indefinite; it marks that the next word is a singular noun. Often it can also be translated as "the". The plural article is optional since there are many other ways to express plurality, namely in demonstratives, numerals, etc.

Personal articles
Masculine Feminine
Personal article te (tem, ten, teng) — Na Nan Nang form could be used in Butaritari and Makin nei

The personal articles are used before personal names. The masculine form is 'te' before names beginning with <i, u, w, b', ng>, 'tem' before <b, m>, 'ten' before <a, e, o, n, r, t> and 'teng' 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 Possessive
suffixes
1st
person		 single i, n -ai ngai au -u
plural ti -ira ngaira ara -ra
2nd
person		 single ko -ko ngkoe am -m
plural kam -ngkamii ngkamii amii -mii
3rd
person		 single e -a ngaia ana -na/n
plural a -ia/i ngaiia aia -ia

Demonstratives

Source:[19]

Basic Masculine Feminine Human Neuter
singularplural singularplural singularplural singularplural
Proximal aei aikai teuaaei uaakai neiei naakai te baei baikai
Medial anne akanne teuaanne uakanne neienne naakanne te baenne baikanne
Distal arei akekei teuaarei uaakekei neierei naakekei te baerei baikekei

The basic 'aei' simply means "this", 'anne" is "that", 'arei' is "that over there" and are used after the noun. 'Aikai' is "these" and so on. The masculine "teuaei" means "this man", the feminine "neiei" means "this woman", and the inanimate "te baei" means "this thing". The feminine demonstrative has no plural form, as the human plural encapsulates mixed groups.[19]

Adverbs

Source:[19]

Time Place
Proximal ngkai ikai
Medial ngkanne ikanne
Distal ngkekei ikekei

"Ngkai" is "now", "ngkanne" is "then" and "ngkekei" is "later". "Ikai" is "here", "ikanne" is "there" and "ikekei" is "over there".

Verbs

Verbs do not conjugate according to person, number, tense, aspect or mood.[20] These verbal categories are indicated by particles. Nonetheless, a passive suffix -aki is used as in:

  • E kabooa te raiti He bought the rice.
  • E kabooaki te raiti The rice was bought (by him).

Any adjective can also be an intransitive verb. Transitive verbs can be formed by the circumfix ka- (...) -a creating a causative verb, e.g. "uraura" (to be red) becomes "kaurauraa" (to redden). Tense is marked by adverbs. However, the default interpretation of the unmarked (by adverbs) verb is a past tense. Below is a list of verbal particles:[21]

  • a (immediate, incompleted and indeterminate)
  • tabe n(i) (progressive)
  • nang(i) (prospective future)
  • na (general future)
  • a tib'a (immediate past)
  • a tia n(i) (past perfect)

Copula verbs

There are no verbs corresponding to English "to be", so a stative verb must be used or a zero copula strategy:

Te

A

tia

workman

mmwakuri

that

teuaarei.

man.

(mwakuri or even makuri are usual forms)

 

Te tia mmwakuri teuaarei.

A workman that man.

That man is a workman.

There is also a locative copula verb "mena":

E

mena

iaon

te

taibora

te

booro.

E mena iaon te taibora te booro.

The ball is on the table

Existential verb

There is no corresponding verb to "to have", instead an existential verb meaning "there to be" is used - iai.

Reduplication

Reduplication is used to mark aspect.

  • Partial reduplication marks the habitual aspect for example "nako" (to go) and "naanako" (to usually go).
  • Full reduplication shows the continuative aspect, e.g. "koro" (to cut), "korokoro" (to continually cut).
  • Mixed: "kiba" (to jump), "kiikiba" (to usually jump), "kibakiba" (to continually jump, to be excited), "kikibakiba" (to jump on regular occasions).

Adjectives can also be formed by reduplication with the meaning of "abundant in [adj.]" - "karau" (rain), "kakarau" (rainy).

Negation

The main negator is the particle "aki" placed after the pronoun and before the verb. The negator "aikoa" is for counterexpected situations.

Ko aki taetae: You don't speak.

Numerals

Gilbertese uses classifiers for counting with numerals like Asian languages (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.). These classifiers are suffixes to the numerals: -ua (general, for objects), -man (animate beings), -kai (plants, land, fish hooks), -ai (fish, elongated objects), -waa (transportation), -baa (leaves, flat objects) among many others. It is a decimal system with -bwi as a "10 counting" suffix. Zero ("akea") is just the word for 'nothing'.[22]

Root With -ua classifier
0 akea -
1 te teuana
2 uo/ua uoua
3 ten(i) tenua [23]
4 a aua
5 nima nimaua
6 ono onoua
7 it(i) itiua
8 wan(i) waniua
9 ruai ruaiua
10 te tebwina

Loanwords

When arriving, the translation of the Bible (te Baibara) was the first duty of the missionaries. Protestants (1860) and Roman Catholics (1888) had to find or create some words that were not in use in the Gilbert Islands, like mountain (te maunga, borrowing it from Hawaiian mauna or Samoan maunga), and like serpents, but also to find a good translation for God (te Atua). Many words were adapted from English, like te moko (smoke), te buun (spoon), te beeki (pig), te raiti (rice), te tai (time, a watch), te auti (house), te katamwa (cat, from expression cat-at-me). Some words of the Swadesh list did not exist in Gilbertese like te aiti (ice) or te tinoo (snow). But things that did not exist previously also were interpreted to form new Gilbertese words: te rebwerebwe (motorbike), te wanikiba (plane, a flying canoe), te momi (pearl, from Hawaiian).[24]

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 (/ŋ ŋː/) and velarized bilabials (/pˠ mˠ/). 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.[25] Neither clearly distinguished the pronunciation of the vowel /a/ after velarized bilabials, like /pˠ/ (bw) and /mˠ/ (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 System
Letter A AA B BW E EE I II K M MM MW N NN NG NGG O OO R T U UU W
IPA /a/ /aː/ /p/ /pˠ/ /e/ /eː/ /i/ /iː/ /k/ /m/ /mː/ /mˠ/ /n/ /nː/ /ŋ/ /ŋː/ /o/ /oː/ /ɾ/ /t/ /u/ /uː/ /βˠ/

Vocabulary

One difficulty in translating the Bible was references to words such as "mountain", a geographical phenomenon unknown to the people of the islands of Kiribati at the time, heard only in the myths from Samoa. Bingham substituted "hilly", which would be more easily understood. Such adjustments are common to all languages as "modern" things require the creation of new words or the usage of loan words.

For example, the Gilbertese word for airplane is te wanikiba, "the canoe that flies". Some words changed to translate Western words into Gilbertese. For example, te aro (species or colour) is now used in translating religion. Te kiri (the dog), found in 1888 vocabulary, is now less used than te kamea (from English, loan word).

Catholic missionaries arrived at the islands in 1888 and translated the Bible independently of Bingham, which led to differences (Bingham wrote Jesus as "Iesu", but the Catholics wrote "Ietu") that would be resolved only in the 20th century. In 1954, Father Ernest Sabatier published the larger and more accurate Kiribati to French dictionary (translated into English by Sister Olivia): Dictionnaire gilbertin–français, 981 pages (edited by South Pacific Commission in 1971). It remains the only work of importance between the Kiribati language and a Western language. It was then reversed by Frédéric Giraldi in 1995 to creating the first French-Kiribati dictionary. In addition, a grammar section was added by Father Gratien Bermond (MSC). The dictionary is available at the French National Library Rare Language Department and at the headquarters of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), Issoudun.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Gilbertese at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ↑ Henry 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.
  3. 1 2 "Kiribati Census Report 2010 Volume 1" (PDF). National Statistics Office, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Government of Kiribati. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 17 March 2013.
  4. ↑ "Kiribati - Phoenix Settlement". www.janeresture.com.
  5. ↑ "Auckland school establishes Kiribati language unit | RNZ". Radio New Zealand. 2021-10-08. Archived from the original on 2021-10-08. Retrieved 2021-10-08.
  6. ↑ "Kiribati / Pacific languages / Home - Pasifika". 2021-10-08. Archived from the original on 2021-10-08. Retrieved 2021-10-08.
  7. ↑ "2018 Census Totals by Topic – National Highlights (Updated)". Statistics New Zealand. 30 April 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
  8. ↑ "PDH.stat: Development indicator database | Statistics for Development Division" (PDF).
  9. ↑ Bender, Byron W. (2003). "Proto-Micronesian Reconstructions: 1". Oceanic Linguistics. 42 (1): 4, 5. doi:10.2307/3623449. JSTOR 3623449.
  10. ↑ Blevins & Harrison (1999:205–206)
  11. ↑ Lee & Timee (2019:24)
  12. 1 2 3 Blevins & Harrison (1999:206)
  13. ↑ Blevins & Harrison (1999:207)
  14. ↑ Blevins & Harrison (1999:209)
  15. ↑ Lee & Timee (2019:25)
  16. ↑ Trussel, Stephen (1979). "Lesson 13" (PDF). Kiribati (Gilbertese): Grammar Handbook. The Experiment Press: Vermont Peace Corps Language Handbook Series. pp. 85–86.
  17. ↑ with possessive suffix -u, my.
  18. ↑ with the same possessive suffix.
  19. 1 2 3 Trussel, Stephen (1979). "Lesson 19" (PDF). Kiribati (Gilbertese): Grammar Handbook. The Experiment Press: Vermont Peace Corps Language Handbook Series. pp. 126–129.
  20. ↑ Trussel, Stephen (1979). "Lesson 31" (PDF). Kiribati (Gilbertese): Grammar Handbook. The Experiment Press: Vermont Peace Corps Language Handbook Series. pp. 203–208.
  21. ↑ Trussel, Stephen (1979). "Lesson 37" (PDF). Kiribati (Gilbertese): Grammar Handbook. The Experiment Press: Vermont Peace Corps Language Handbook Series. pp. 239–245.
  22. ↑ Trussel, Stephen (1979). "Lesson 16" (PDF). Kiribati (Gilbertese): Grammar Handbook. The Experiment Press: Vermont Peace Corps Language Handbook Series. pp. 103–109.
  23. ↑ The script teniua is also usual.
  24. ↑ Alekseev, Fedor (2015). "Loanword adaptation strategies in Gilbertese" (PDF). CAES. 1 (1): 46–52. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
  25. ↑ 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.

Bibliography

Gilbertese language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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