Whitesands language

Whitesands
East Tanna
Narak
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Tanna Island, east coast
Native speakers	7,500 (2001) [1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic South Vanuatu Tanna Whitesands
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tnp
Glottolog	whit1269
Whitesands is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Whitesands, or East Tanna, or Narak, ^[2] is a language spoken on the eastern coast of Tanna, in southern Vanuatu. It is closely related to the neighbouring North Tanna and Lenakel languages. ^[3]

Phonology

Consonants

Whitesands has 16 consonant phonemes: ^{[3] : 9}

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Plosive	p	t	tʲ	k
Fricative	f	s		x	h
Rhotic		r ɹ
Lateral		l
Semivowel	w		j

Vowels

It has six phonemic vowels: ^{[3] : 8}

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ə	u
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		ɐ

References

1. Whitesands at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. François, Alexandre; Franjieh, Michael; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Schnell, Stefan (2015), "The exceptional linguistic density of Vanuatu", in François, Alexandre; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Franjieh, Michael; Schnell, Stefan (eds.), The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity, Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, Canberra: Asia Pacific Linguistics Open Access, pp. 1–21.
3. Hammond, Jeremy (June 2009). "The Grammar of Nouns and Verbs in Whitesands, an Oceanic Language of Southern Vanuatu" (PDF). CORE.