Rotuman language

Rotuman
Spoken in	Fiji
speaker	9,000
Linguistic classification	Austronesian Malayo Polynesian East Malayo Polynesian Oceanic Central-East Oceanic Central Pacific West Fiji Rotuma Rotuman language
Official status
Official language in	Rotuma
Language codes
ISO 639-3	rtm

The Rotuman Language is a Malayo-Polynesian language that the Rotuma Group of the island nation Fiji from those who Rotumanen is spoken. The language contains many loanwords from Tongan and Samoan , which makes precise classification difficult, but the language is often grouped into a language family with Fiji . In contrast to the neighboring languages, the language uses the SVO sentence order.

Phonology

consonant

	labial	Coronal	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
nasal	m	n		ŋ
stop	p	t	tʃ	k	ʔ
Fricative	fv	s			H
Liquids		rl

alphabet

• a - / a /

• ȧ or ä - / a /
• ạ - / ɔ /

• e - / e /
• f - / f /
• g - / ŋ /
• h - / h /
• i - / i /
• j - / tʃ /
• k - / k /
• l - / l /
• m - / m /
• n - / n /
• o - / ɔ /

• ö - / ø /

• p - / p /
• s - / s /
• t - / t /
• u - / u /

• ü - / y /

• v - / v /
• ʻ– / ʔ / ( crackling sound )

Examples

German	Rotuman
Left	sema
right	ʻAtmại
go	la'o
swim	rạpi
dirty	pearpera
shoulder	uma

literature

• Hans Schmidt: Rotuma: Language and History. Edition Barkau, Großbarkau 2000, ISBN 3-928326-25-2 (also dissertation, University, Hamburg 1999) (PDF; 816 kB).
• A new Rotuman dictionary. An English - Rotuman wordlist by Elizabeth K. Inia Sophie Arntsen, Hans Schmidt, Jan Rensel and Alan Howard and C. Maxwell Churchward’s Rotuman - English dictionary of 1940 . Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji 1998, ISBN 982-02-0128-4 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).