| Tanema | |
|---|---|
| Tetawo | |
| Native to | Solomon Islands |
| Region | Vanikoro |
Native speakers | 1 (2012) [1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | tnx |
| Glottolog | tane1237 |
| ELP | Tanema |
 Tanema is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Tanema (Tetawo, Tetau) is a nearly extinct language of the island of Vanikoro, in the easternmost province of the Solomon Islands.
As of 2012, Tanema is only spoken by one speaker, Lainol Nalo. [1] [3] Like its neighbour Lovono, it has been replaced by Teanu, the main language of Vanikoro.
The late Emele Mamuli was a prolific storyteller who could speak fluently the three languages of Vanikoro: Teanu, Lovono and Tanema. [4] She was one of the last speakers of Tanema.
Some information on the languages of Vanikoro, including Tanema, can be found in François (2009) for the grammar, and François (2021) for the lexicon. [5]
The Pangloss Collection is a digital library whose objective is to store and facilitate access to audio recordings in endangered languages of the world. Developed by the LACITO centre of CNRS in Paris, the collection provides free online access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, in otherwise little-documented languages of all continents.
Vanikoro is an island in the Santa Cruz group, located 118 kilometres to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group. It is part of the Temotu Province of Solomon Islands.
Alexandre François is a French linguist specialising in the description and study of the indigenous languages of Melanesia. He belongs to Lattice, a research centre of the CNRS and École Normale Supérieure dedicated to linguistics.
The Temotu languages, named after Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands, are a branch of Oceanic languages proposed in Ross & Næss (2007) to unify the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages with Utupua and Vanikoro, each a group of three related languages.
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Teanu is the main language spoken on the island of Vanikoro, in the easternmost province of the Solomon Islands.
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