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Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
Melanesians are the predominant and indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in an area stretching from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands. Most speak one of the many languages of the Austronesian language family or one of the many unrelated families of Papuan languages. There are several creoles of the region, such as Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, Solomon Islands Pijin, Bislama, and Papuan Malay.
The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages are spoken by only two million people. The largest individual Oceanic languages are Eastern Fijian with over 600,000 speakers, and Samoan with an estimated 400,000 speakers. The Gilbertese (Kiribati), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori and Tolai languages each have over 100,000 speakers. The common ancestor which is reconstructed for this group of languages is called Proto-Oceanic.
The Western Oceanic languages is a linkage of Oceanic languages, proposed and studied by Ross (1988). They make up a majority of the Austronesian languages spoken in New Guinea.
The Meso-Melanesian languages are a linkage of Oceanic languages spoken in the large Melanesian islands of New Ireland and the Solomon Islands east of New Guinea. Bali is one of the most conservative languages.
The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage of Oceanic languages spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It was proposed by John Lynch in 1995 and supported by later studies. It appears to be a linkage rather than a language family with a clearly defined internal nested structure.
The Tanga Islands are an island group in Papua New Guinea, located north-east of New Ireland and part of the Bismarck Archipelago. Tanga is made up of four main islands — Boang, Malendok, Lif and Tefa — and a number of smaller, uninhabited islands. Boang consists entirely of a raised, relatively flat-topped plateau of Pleistocene, coralline limestone, which rises up to 170 m above sea level (asl.) and has sheer cliffs around a large part of its perimeter. The islands are the remnants of a stratovolcano which collapsed to form a caldera. Lif (283 m), Tefa (155 m), and Malendok (472 m) islands are on the caldera rim, while Bitlik and Bitbok islands are lava domes constructed near the center of the caldera.
Vitu or Muduapa is an Oceanic language spoken by about 7,000 people on the islands northwest of the coast of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea.
Uneapa is an Oceanic language spoken by about 10,000 people on the small island of Bali (Uneapa), north of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea. It is perhaps a dialect of neighboring Vitu. Uneapa is one of the most conservative Oceanic languages, having retained most of Proto-Oceanic's final consonants with an echo vowel, such as *Rumaq 'house' > rumaka and *saqat 'bad' > zaɣata.
Namatanai Rural LLG is a local government area in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea. The LLG is located in Namatanai District and the LLG headquarters is Namatanai.
Tanir Rural LLG is a local government area in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea since 2008. The LLG administers the Tanga Islands and the Feni Islands. Tanir is a portmanteau word from the two island names which are Tanga and Anir.
Fenualoa is the second largest island in the Reef Islands, in Temotu Province, in the nation of Solomon Islands.
Teop is a language of northern Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. It falls within the Oceanic languages, a subgrouping of the Austronesian language family. According to Malcolm Ross, Teop belongs to the Nehan-Bougainville family of languages, part of the Northwest Solomonic group of the Meso-Melanesian cluster within the Oceanic languages. Its closest relative is Saposa.
Lemerig is an Oceanic language spoken on Vanua Lava, in Vanuatu.
Olrat was an Oceanic language of Gaua island, in northern Vanuatu. It became extinct in 2009, with the death of its last speaker Maten Womal.
Jawe is one of the Kanak languages spoken in the northern province of the largest island of New Caledonia named Grande Terre. Jawe speakers are located along the northeast coast of the island, north of Hienghène and south of Pouébo; primarily in the Cascada de Tao region, Tchambouenne, and in the upper valleys of both sides of the centrally dividing mountain range.
Volow is an Oceanic language variety that used to be spoken in the area of Aplow, in the eastern part of the island of Motalava, Vanuatu.
The St. George linkage links the North-West Solomonic and New Ireland languages under the Meso-Melanesian languages. Members of the St George linkage are Niwer Mil language, Warwar Feni, Fanamaket, Sursurunga, Konomala, Patpatar, Tolai, Kandas, Ramoaina, Lungalunga, Label, Bilur, and Siar.
Tanga people is a tribe of Papua New Guinea that lives in the Tanga Islands and Feni Islands of Tanir Rural LLG and three villages in the Matalai Rural LLG of Namatanai District of New Ireland Province. They speak the Tangga language which has since been split into three separate languages which are now spoken by the Tangans. These languages are: Niwer Mil, Warwar Feni and Fanamaket. Their population according to the 2011 Papua New Guinea Census Report is 12,466 people. Tubuan, Sokapana and Ingiet are the secret societies practised by the Tanga people. F.L.S. Bell has a collection on Tanga Islands in the University of Sydney Library in Australia.
The Torres–Banks languages form a linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in the Torres Islands and Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu.
References
- ↑ 2011 PNG Census
- ↑ Lynch, John; Malcolm Ross; Terry Crowley (2002). The Oceanic languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. ISBN 9780700711284. OCLC 48929366
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Meso-Melanesian linkage". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ↑ Niwer Mil (Tanga Island) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)