“Gilbertese language”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Taetae ni Kiribati or Gilbertese, also Kiribati (sometimes Kiribatese), is a Micronesian language of the Austronesian language family. It has a basic verb–object–subject word order.

Name

The word Kiribati is the modern rendition for "Gilberts", so the name is not usually translated into English. "Gilberts" comes from Captain Thomas Gilbert, who, along with Captain John Marshall, was one of the first Europeans to visit the Gilbert Islands in 1788. Some of the islands had been sighted or visited earlier,^[1] including by Commodore John Byron, whose ships happened on Nikunau in 1765. Frequenting of the islands by Europeans and Chinese dates from whaling and oil trading from the 1820s, when no doubt Europeans learnt to speak it, as I-Kiribati learnt to speak English and other languages foreign to them. However, it wasn't until Hiram Bingham II took up missionary work on Abaiang in the 1860s that the language began to take on the written form known today. For example, Bingham was the first to translate the Bible into Gilbertese, and wrote several hymn books, dictionaries and commentaries in the language of the Gilbert Islands.

The official name of the language is now te taetae ni Kiribati, or 'the Kiribati language'.

The first complete description of this language was in Dictionnaire gilbertin–français of Father Ernest Sabatier (981 pp, 1954), a Catholic priest. This dictionary was later translated into English by Sister Olivia (with the help of South Pacific Commission).

Speakers

Over 99% of the 103,000 people living in Kiribati are ethnically I-Kiribati (wholly or partly)^[2] and speak Kiribati. Kiribati is also spoken by most inhabitants of Nui (Tuvalu), Rabi Island (Fiji), Mili (Marshall Islands) and some other islands where I-Kiribati have been relocated (Solomon Islands, notably Choiseul Province; and Vanuatu)^[3] or emigrated (to New Zealand and Hawaii mainly).

Unlike some other languages in the Pacific region, the Kiribati language is far from extinct, and most speakers use it daily. 97% of those living in Kiribati are able to read in Kiribati, and 80% are able to read English.^[2]

Countries by number of Kiribati speakers

Linguistics and study

The Kiribati language has two main dialects: the Northern and the Southern dialects. The main differences between them are in the pronunciation of some words. The islands of Butaritari and Makin also have their own dialect. It differs from the standard Kiribati in vocabulary and pronunciation.

Dialect listing

Historical sound changes

Phonology

Quantity is distinctive for vowels and nasal consonants but not for the remaining sounds so that ana /ana/ (third person singular article) contrasts with aana /aːna/ ('its underside') as well as anna /anːa/ ('dry land'). Other minimal pairs include:^[6]

Written Kiribati

The Kiribati language is written in the Latin script and since the 1840s, when Hiram Bingham Jr, a missionary, first translated the Bible into Kiribati. Previously, the language was unwritten. Long vowels and consonants are represented by doubling the character, and a few digraphs are used for the velar nasals (/ŋ ŋː/) and velarized stops (i.e. /pˠ mˠ/).

Translating Kiribati

One difficulty in translating the Bible was references to words such as "mountain", a geographical phenomenon unknown to the people of the islands of Kiribati at the time (heard only in the myths from Samoa). Bingham decided to use "hilly", which would be more easily understood. Such adjustments are common to all languages as "modern" things require the creation of new words. For example, the Gilbertese word for airplane is te wanikiba, "the canoe that flies".

Catholic missionaries arrived at the islands in 1888 and translated the Bible independently of Bingham, resulting in differences (Bingham wrote Jesus as "Iesu", while the Catholics wrote "Ietu") that would be resolved only in the 20th century. In 1954, Father Ernest Sabatier published the bigger and more accurate Kiribati to French dictionary (translated into English by Sister Olivia): Dictionnaire gilbertin–français, 981 pages (edited by South Pacific Commission in 1971). It remains the only work of importance between the Kiribati and a Western language. It was then reversed by Frédéric Giraldi in 1995, creating the first French to Kiribati dictionary. In addition, a grammar section was added by Father Gratien Bermond (MSC). This dictionary is available at the French National Library (rare language department) and at the headquarters of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), Issoudun.

Useful phrases

Text sample

(Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. Book of Genesis 11:1–9)^[11]

Notes

1. ^Maude, H. E. (1961). Post-Spanish discoveries in the central Pacific. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 67-111.
2. ^¹{{cite web |title=Kiribati Census Report 2010 Volume 1 |url=http://www.mfed.gov.ki/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Census-Report-2010-Volume-1.pdf |publisher=National Statistics Office, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Government of Kiribati |accessdate=17 March 2013 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/6RiBPOvsM?url=http://www.mfed.gov.ki/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Census-Report-2010-Volume-1.pdf |archivedate=10 August 2014 |df= }}
3. ^{{cite web|title=Kiribati - Phoenix and Solomon Islands Resettlement Schemes|url=http://www.janeresture.com/kiribati_phoenix/}}
4. ^{{cite journal|last1=Bender|first1=Byron W.|title=Proto-Micronesian Reconstructions: 1|journal=Oceanic Linguistics|date=2003|volume=42|issue=1|pages=4, 5|doi=10.2307/3623449|jstor=3623449}}
5. ^{{Harvcoltxt|Blevins|1999|pp=205–206}}
6. ^¹²{{Harvcoltxt|Blevins|1999|p=206}}
7. ^{{Harvcoltxt|Blevins|1999|p=207}}
8. ^{{Harvcoltxt|Blevins|1999|p=209}}
9. ^Te taetae ni Kiribati – Kiribati Language Lessons – 10
10. ^https://www.omniglot.com/babel/kiribati.htm
11. ^https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11:1-9