Talk:Tuvaluan language

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What does "Nuclear Polynesian language" mean? -- RickK

"Nuclear" is a subfamily of the Polynesian languages; I believe "Polynesian Outlier languages" is a nother one. See the taxobox at Maori language, for example. -- pne 17:27, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"Tuvaluan is a Nuclear Polynesian language of the Ellicean group spoken in Tuvalu. It has common words with other Polynesian languages"

This is true for all Polynesian languages. It would be interesting to point out differences rather than similarities. Apokrif 14:13, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 September 2020 and 18 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lauraz12345.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Infobox

I've added the infobox along the side. The info's from the Ethnologue website. It's my first box, feel free to spruce it up.--Stella luna 02:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Tuvaluan Scouting

Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Tuvaluan? Thanks! Chris 06:55, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Tuvaluan phonology

Niko Besnier (2000. Tuvaluan: A Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific. London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-02456-0, p. 609) as well as Geoff and Jenny Jackson (1999. An introduction to Tuvaluan. Suva: Oceania Printers, pp.6-7, ) both state that the labial fricative phonemes of Tuvaluan are labio-dental, and not bilabial. Only the voiced labial fricative may "in casual speech, sometimes" be bilabial, according to Besnier (who uses the term labio-labial). This, however, is not the norm. Besnier's field research was mostly done on Nukulaelae. During my own almost twelve-year-long linguistic field research on Funafuti, I have never heard the labial fricatives being realised as [ɸ] and [β] but always as [f] and [v]. The phoneme /h/ is still in general, not limited, use in the Nanumea and Nanumaga dialects, especially in the speech of older speakers, including in some loanwords (Besnier, op. cit., pp. 609-610). Manuelatolua (talk) 17:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC). The native name of this language is "Te Ggana Tuuvalu" (southern dialects), or "Te Gagana Tuuvalu" (northern dialects). The southern dialects have a geminate <g>=[ŋ], whereas the northern ones have the (original) partially reduplicated form. The southern variant "ggana" is the result of the deletion of the first vowel between the two identical consonants. The author of this article seems to prefer Niko Besnier's orthography (employing double letters), not the one proposed by the Tuvalu Language Board (TLB, employing macrons and apostrophies), and consequently the name Tuvalu should be spelled "Tuuvalu" in Tuvaluan because, phonetically speaking, the first vowel is long (phonemically speaking, it is a sequence of two identical vowels).Manuelatolua (talk) 11:57, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Articles

According to the article, Tuvaluan possesses three articles, not four. I don't know which theory of grammar the article follows, but "a zero article" is something that doesn't exists. Hence there are three, not four. You might as well say that languages without articles (Latin, Russian etc.) have any number of "zero articles". You might also say that languages, which possess a definite article but not an indefinite one have a "zero indefinite article". Am I the only one to think this is nonsense? All the best 85.220.22.139 (talk) 16:04, 10 August 2013 (UTC)