Geography | |
---|---|
Location | Pacific Ocean |
Coordinates | 16°25′55″S168°14′08″E / 16.43194°S 168.23556°E |
Archipelago | New Hebrides |
Area | 32.3 km2 (12.5 sq mi) |
Administration | |
Vanuatu | |
Province | Malampa |
Demographics | |
Population | 1,627 (2009) |
Ethnic groups | Ni-Vanuatu |
Paama (Paama language: Voum [1] ) is a small island in Malampa Province, Vanuatu.
The island is about 8 km from north to south and only 5 km or so at its widest point. The island is dominated by hills, rising to a height of around 550 m in the north.
Paama lies a short distance south of Ambrym, a little further east of Malakula, about 7 km west of the large active volcano Lopevi (Ulvae, in the vernacular (see Crowley 1982), and a short distance north of the island of Epi. During daylight, all of Paama's neighbouring islands are clearly visible from various locations on the island. Indeed, on a clear night the red glow of Ambrym's twin volcanos can be seen clearly from the black sand beach at Liro. The now uninhabited island of Lopevi dominates the view east from the village of Lulep, on the northeast coast of the island. This active volcano is reasonably regular, erupting every two years or so, causing quite serious problems for those living in the villages of Lulep and Luli in the northeast of the island. The acidic volcanic ash falls onto gardens, ruining crops, and onto the natangura thatched roofs, rotting it.
Today the majority of people living on Paama live in villages close to the coast of the island and make their gardens on the hillsides nearby. Agricultural produce is by and large for subsistence although some is exported for sale in Port Vila (Vanuatu's capital on Éfaté) and Luganville (on Espiritu Santo).
Liro, the island's council and administrative centre is the most heavily populated village on the island. The council building, standing a hundred or so metres up from the shore is said to have been the house of the Rev. Maurice Frater, the Presbyterian missionary resident on the island in the early 1900s. [2] [3] Frater arrived on the island in 1900, when outsiders were treated with great hostility, and stayed for 39 years, building 21 churches and converting the majority of the population to Christianity. [4]
Today the island's population rests at around 1,600, [5] with the vast majority dwelling on the west coast of the island. However, the number of people claiming to be Paamese is much greater than this. Around 7,000 people living throughout Vanuatu claimed to be Paamese in the 1999 census. Indeed, Paama has the highest outmigration rate of any of Vanuatu's 83 or so islands [6] [7]
The inhabitants speak the Paama language, termed Paamese by the linguist Terry Crowley, though the residents have no term for the language themselves. It is an East Vanuatu language, a close cognate of the Southeast Ambrym language. However, they are not so close that all speakers of one understand speakers of the other. [1] In addition to speaking Paamese, the majority of Paamese people also speak Bislama, one of the three national languages of Vanuatu. [8]
In the northern part of the island there is the grass strip of Paama Airport, based at the village of Tavie. Landing and taking off from this airport is not for the faint-hearted – it is one of the shortest airstrips in the whole of Vanuatu.
Vanuatu, officially the Republic of Vanuatu, is an island country in Melanesia, located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is 1,750 km (1,090 mi) east of northern Australia, 540 km (340 mi) northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji.
Port Vila, or simply Vila, is the capital and largest city of Vanuatu. It is located on the island of Efate.
Bislama is an English-based creole language and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" and the second language of much of the rest of the country's residents. The lyrics of "Yumi, Yumi, Yumi", the country's national anthem, are composed in Bislama.
Malampa is one of the six provinces of Vanuatu, located in the center of the country. It consists of three main islands: Malakula, Ambrym and Paama, and takes its name from the first syllable of their names. It includes a number of other islands – the small islands of Uripiv, Norsup, Rano, Wala, Atchin and Vao off the coast of Malakula, and the volcanic island of Lopevi. Also included are the Maskelynes Islands and some more small islands along the south coast of Malakula.
Ambrym is a volcanic island in Malampa Province in the archipelago of Vanuatu. Volcanic activity on the island includes lava lakes in two craters near the summit.
Tanna is an island in Tafea Province of Vanuatu.
Pentecost Island is one of the 83 islands that make up the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.
Shefa is one of the six provinces of Vanuatu, located in the center of the country and including the islands of Epi and Efate and the Shepherd Islands. The province's name is derived from the initial letters of SHepherd and EFAte. It has a population of 78,723 people and an area of 1,455 km2. Its capital is Port Vila, which is also the capital of the nation.
Malakula Island, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean.
The Central Vanuatu languages form a linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in central Vanuatu.
Ni-Vanuatu is a large group of closely related Melanesian ethnic groups native to the island country of Vanuatu. As such, Ni-Vanuatu are a mixed ethnolinguistic group with a shared ethnogenesis that speak a multitude of languages.
Terence Michael Crowley was a linguist specializing in Oceanic languages as well as Bislama, the English-lexified Creole recognized as a national language in Vanuatu. From 1991 he taught in New Zealand. Previously, he was with the Pacific Languages Unit of the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu (1983–90) and with the Department of Language and Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea (1979–83).
Erromango is the fourth largest island in the Vanuatu archipelago. With a land area of 891.9 square kilometres (344.4 sq mi), it is the largest island in Tafea Province, the southernmost of Vanuatu's six administrative regions.
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 Republic of Vanuatu has the world's highest linguistic density per capita. Despite being a country with a population of less than 300,000, Vanuatu is home to 138 indigenous Oceanic languages.
Paamese, or Paama, is the language of the island of Paama in Northern Vanuatu. There is no indigenous term for the language; however linguists have adopted the term Paamese to refer to it. Both a grammar and a dictionary of Paamese have been produced by Terry Crowley.
This article presents an overview of the culture of Vanuatu.
Southeast Ambrym, Vatlongos, or Taveak, is a language of Ambrym Island, Vanuatu. It is closely related to Paamese.
Lenakel, or West Tanna, is a dialect chain spoken on the western coast of Tanna Island in Vanuatu.
Mavea, or locally Mav̈ea, is an inhabited island in Sanma Province of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean. The island lies off the eastern coast of Espiritu Santo. The estimated terrain elevation above the sea level is some 63 metres.