Nume
Glottocode : nume1241 ISO 639-3 : tgs
Nume is one of the six languages spoken on Gaua – the largest of the Banks Islands – in northern Vanuatu. It has about 700 speakers. Its phylogenetic affiliation is the same as the other 138 languages spoken in Vanuatu: it is an Oceanic language – and thus a member of the vast Austronesian family that covers most islands in the Pacific.
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The languages of Gaua island
Gaua is home to two dozen villages or hamlets, scattered around its circular coast. The six languages spoken there form a dialect chain (Kalyan & François 2018) that can be cited clockwise, as Nume – Mwerlap – Dorig – Koro – Olrat – Lakon.
Nume is the language spoken in Gaua’s northeastern corner – around the island’s airfield, in the villages of Namasari, Lebot, Tarasag. The word Nume is also the name of a former village, in the same area. The language is also sometimes named Tarasag, or Gog.
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The Nume recordings
Alexandre François met Nume speakers in August 2003, as part of his linguistic survey of Gaua. Thanks to a specially designed questionnaire (François 2019), he quickly acquired the essentials of the language – enough to understand its basic grammar and lexicon, and also to collect some of the traditional oral literature.
This Nume archive feature a handful of stories – known locally as kekkeom. They include trickster stories around the popular character “Wenawon” – as this short story, narrated by Bresli.
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The Nume language
3.1. Phonology, orthography
The orthography proposed for transcribing the Nume texts follows this alphabetical order:
{ a b d e ē g i k l m m̄ n n̄ o ō q r s t u v w }.
Each of these letters corresponds to one phoneme in the language.
Nume has 15 phonemic consonants. The following chart lists the phonemes themselves (using IPA); the orthographic convention is shown in brackets. For example, the letter ‹q› in the orthography encodes the labiovelar stop /k͡pʷ/.
Table 1 – The 15 phonemic consonants of Nume
labiovelar |
bilabial |
alveolar |
velar |
|
voiceless stop |
k͡pʷ ‹q› |
|
t ‹t› |
k ‹k› |
prenasalized stop |
ᵐb ‹b› |
ⁿd ‹d› |
|
|
fricative |
β [β,ɸ] ‹v› |
s ‹s› |
ɣ ‹g› |
|
nasal |
ŋ͡mʷ ‹m̄› |
m ‹m› |
n ‹n› |
ŋ ‹n̄› |
lateral |
l ‹l› |
|||
rhotic |
r ‹r› |
|||
approximant |
w ‹w› |
Nume has 7 phonemic vowels (François 2005):
Table 2 – The 7 vowels of Nume
|
front |
back |
close |
i ‹i› |
u ‹u› |
near-close |
ɪ ‹ē› |
ʊ ‹ō› |
open-mid |
ɛ ‹e› |
ɔ ‹o› |
open |
a ‹a› |
François published an ABC-book in Nume, in monolingual format, meant to endow younger generations with basic literacy materials in their native language: “Manmanes ta Nume – Our language Nume” (François & François 2011).
3.2. Pronominal indexing
The personal pronouns of Nume (François 2016) distinguish four numbers: singular, dual, trial, plural. They also strictly encode the contrast between ‘inclusive we’ [=you & me & others] and ‘exclusive we’ [me & others]. Thus the pronoun duru “1inclusive: dual” means ‘you & me’, whereas kamar “1exclusive: dual” will read as ‘one person (other than you) + myself’, i.e. ‘me & him/her’.
The free pronouns, listed in the next table, can serve as subjects, objects of verbs, objects of prepositions.
Table 3 – The free personal pronouns of Nume
|
singular |
dual |
trial |
plural |
1 inclusive |
|
duru |
dōtōl |
gin |
1 exclusive |
na |
kamar |
kamatōl |
kama |
2 |
nik |
kumur |
kōmtōl |
kimi |
3 |
ni |
ruru |
rōtōl |
nir |
(1) |
Na |
vi‑ |
gil |
nik, |
wat |
nik |
veta |
gil |
mi |
na. |
|
1sg |
stat |
know |
2sg |
but |
2sg |
neg₁ |
know |
neg₂ |
1sg |
|
‘I know you, but you don't know me.’ |
(2) |
Ruru |
qar |
togtog |
vaten |
kama. |
|
3du |
fut |
stay:redup |
with |
1exc:pl |
‘They (two) will stay with us.’ |
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Useful references
For more on the languages of Northern Vanuatu, visit http://alex.francois.online.fr. The following selected publications help understand Nume in its context:
François, Alexandre. 2005. Unraveling the history of the vowels of seventeen northern Vanuatu languages. Oceanic Linguistics 44 (2): 443-504. Dec 2005. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i.
— 2012. The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 214, 85–110.
— 2016. The historical morphology of personal pronouns in northern Vanuatu. Faits de Langues. Bern: Peter Lang. 25–60.
François, Alexandre & Sawako François. 2011. Manmanes ta Nume – Our language Nume. Monolingual in Nume. Illustrated by Sawako François. Port-Vila: Alliance Française. 32 pp.
Kalyan, Siva & Alexandre François. 2018. Freeing the Comparative Method from the tree model: A framework for Historical Glottometry. In R. Kikusawa & L. Reid (eds), Let's talk about trees: Genetic Relationships of Languages and Their Phylogenic Representation (Senri Ethnological Studies, 98). Ōsaka: National Museum of Ethnology. 59–89.
Here is how you can cite the present archive:
François, Alexandre. 2022. Archive of audio recordings in the Nume language. Pangloss Collection. Paris: CNRS.
Resources
DOI | Type | Transcription(s) | Duration | Title | Researcher(s) | Speaker(s) |
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|
00:00:40 | Introduction to a story | François, Alexandre | François, Alexandre | ||
|
00:04:01 | A story | François, Alexandre | Derik Vanvan | ||
|
00:03:19 | Wenawon the Trickster - 2 | François, Alexandre | Bresli | ||
|
00:03:26 | Wenawon the Trickster | François, Alexandre | Bresli |