Tamambo language

Tamambo
Spoken in	Vanuatu
Region	Malo Island, Espiritu Santo
Native speakers	3,000  (date missing)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Vanuatu North Vanuatu Santo–Malekula Santo West Santo Tamambo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mla

Tamambo is an Oceanic language spoken by at least 3,000 people on Malo and nearby islands in Vanuatu.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low	a

/i u/ become [j w] respectively when unstressed and before another vowel. /o/ may also become [w] for some speakers.

Consonants

Tamambo consonant phonemes

		Bilabial		Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar
		plain	labiovelarized
Nasal		m	mʷ	n		ŋ
Stop	prenasalized	ᵐb	ᵐbʷ	ⁿd	ᶮɟ
	plain			t		k
Fricative	voiced	β	βʷ			x
	voiceless			s
Trill				r
Lateral				l

The prenasalized postalveolar stop /ᶮɟ/ is often affricated and voiceless, i.e. [ᶮtʃ].

Younger speakers often realize /β/ as [f] initially and [v] medially, while /βʷ/ is often replaced by [w].

/x/ is usually realized as [x] initially, but some speakers use [h]. Medially, it may be pronounced as any of [x ɣ h ɦ ɡ].

Writing system

Few speakers of Tamambo are literate, and there is no standard orthography. Spelling conventions used include:

Phoneme	Representation
/ᵐb/	B initially, mb medially.
/ᵐbʷ/	Bu or bw initially, mbu or mbw medially.
/x/	C or h.
/ⁿd/	D initially, nd medially.
/ᶮɟ/	J initially, nj medially.
/k/	K.
/l/	L.
/m/	M.
/mʷ/	Mu or mw.
/n/	N.
/ŋ/	Ng.
/r/	R.
/s/	S.
/t/	T.
/β/	V.
/βʷ/	Vu or w.

Bibliography

• Jauncey, Dorothy G. (1997). A Grammar of Tamambo, the Language of Western Malo, Vanuatu. Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra. 
• Jauncey, Dorothy G. (2002), "Tamambo", in Lynch, J., Ross, M. & Crowley, T., The Oceanic Languages, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, pp. 608–625 
• Riehl, Anastasia K.; Jauncey, Dorothy (2005). "Illustrations of the IPA: Tamambo". Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2): 255–259. doi:10.1017/S0025100305002197 

External links

• Ethnologue page