Meriam language

Meriam
Spoken in	Murray Island, Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia
Ethnicity	Meriam
Native speakers	320  (1996 census)
Language family	Eastern Trans-Fly Meriam
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ulk

Meriam (in the language itself Meriam Mìr; also Miriam, Meryam, Mer, Mir, Miriam-Mir, etc. and Eastern, Isten, Esten, Eastern Torres Strait, and Able Able) is the language of the people of the small islands of Mer (Murray Island), Waier and Dauar, Erub (Darnley Island), and Ugar (Stephens Island) in the eastern Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. In the Western Torres Strait language, Kala Lagaw Ya, it is called Mœyam or Mœyamau Ya. It is the only Papuan language on Australian territory.

Classification

Although Meriam is located in Australian territory, it is a Papuan language. It has, however, around 25 percent of its vocabulary in common with its unrelated Western Torres Strait neighbour Kala Lagaw Ya, which is an Australian language. There are some minor vocabulary influences of Melanesian, Polynesian (in particular Rotuman), Indonesian, Philippine, Japanese, and European origin. Many such outsiders were recruited – or in some cases black-birded – in the 19th century for pearl diving and other marine work.

Meriam was classified in the Eastern Trans-Fly family of Trans–New Guinea by Stephen Wurm, who however felt that these have retained remnants of pre-Trans–New Guinea languages, and this is followed by Ethnologue (2005). In 2005 Malcolm Ross concluded that the Eastern Trans-Fly languages were not part of the Trans–New Guinea phylum, but kept the family intact with Meriam as a member. R.M.W. Dixon (2002) regards claims of a relationship between the Fly River languages and Meriam as unproven, though what he bases his claim on is not clear, as Meriam Mir has a high cognation rate with its sister languages, and a certain amount of mutual intelligibility is claimed by Meriam speakers. Such Trans-Fly cognates include personal pronouns and verbal and nominal morphology.

Dialects

The language is currently dialectless. However, there was once a separate dialect spoken on Erub and Ugar islands, characterised in part by the retention of phonemic distinctions between 'ng', 'g', 'n' and 'r' where these have fallen together in two ways in Meriam Mir. The sound 'ng' in Modern Meriam has become 'n' at the beginning of words and 'g' within words; 'n' in general has become 'r' within words. The earliest records (early 19th century) of Meriam Mìr, which were actually in the Erub dialect, Erubim Mìr, included the phrase debe lang good taste/nice, where lang is identical to the Gizra lang of the same meaning. In present-day Meriam Mìr the phrase is debe lag.

• 'ng' > 'n' at the beginning of a word : Erub ngenkep, Mer nerkep heart (ngen/ner breath, kep body part, (cf. Kala Lagaw Ya ngœnakaapu, ngœna breath + kaapu body part)
• 'ng' > 'g' within and at the end of a word : Erub debe lang > Mer debe lag; Erub denger, Mer deger dugong (cf. Kala Lagaw Ya dhangal)
• Erub ngeng, Mer neg, Bine ngango laugh.
• 'n' > 'n' at the beginning of a word : Erub naiger > Mer naiger North-East
• 'n' > 'r' in the middle and at the end of a word : Erub ngenkep > Mer nerkep heart

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i (i)	u (u)
Retracted High	ɪ (ì)	ʊ (ù)
Mid	e (e)	o (o)
Low	a, ə (a)	ɔ (ò)

The sounds represented by [a] and [ə] are allophonic. Schwa appears mainly in syllables BEFORE the stress accent and optionally in open unstressed syllables otherwise. [a] appears in stressed syllables and in unstressed closed syllables.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Alveo-Palatal	Velar
Stop	Voiceless	p	t			k
	Voiced	b		d		ɡ
Nasal		m	n
Fricative	Voiceless				s
	Voiced				z
Lateral			l
Trill/Tap				r
Semivowel		w			y

Stress

Stress is contrastive in Meriam and can occur on the first or second syllable. Examples are tábo snake and tabó neck

References

• Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521473780. 
• Passi, Gamalai Ken; Piper, Nick (1994). "Meryam Mir". In Nick Thieberger & William McGregor. Macquarie Aboriginal Words. Macquarie Library. pp. 320–351. 
• Piper, N. (1989). A sketch grammar of Meryam Mer. Australian National University. 
• Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson. Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. 

External links

• Opolera Wetpur Anglican Holy Communion service in Meriam
• Ethnologue report for language code:ulk