Olrat is an extinct Oceanic language of Gaua island, in northern Vanuatu. It became extinct in 2009 with the death of its last speaker, Maten Womal.François (2022).
Name The name Olrat (spelled natively as Ōlrat ) is an endonym. Robert Codrington mentions a place south of Lakon village under the Mota name Ulrata.See page 378 of: A few decades later, Sidney Ray mentions the language briefly in 1926 under the name Ulrata ‒ but provides no linguistic information.See page 428 of: .
Speakers
In 2003, only three speakers of Olrat remained, who lived on the middle-west coast of Gaua.List of Banks islands languages. Their community had left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century, and merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant..
Alexandre François identifies Olrat as a distinct language from its immediate neighbor Lakon, on phonological, grammatical, and lexical grounds. Phonology Olrat has 14 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and 7 long vowels /iː ɪː ɛː aː ɔː ʊː uː/., .
+ Olrat vowels Front Back Near-close ∙ ∙ Close-mid ∙ ∙ Open-mid ∙ ∙ Open ∙
Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative was lost syllable-finally..
Grammar The system of personal pronouns in Olrat contrasts clusivity, and distinguishes four numbers (singular, dual, trial, plural).François (2016).
Spatial reference in Olrat is based on a system of geocentric (absolute) directionals, which is typical of Oceanic languages.François (2015).
Notes and references References
Bibliography
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External links Petition (2008) to create ISO code for Olrat Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Olrat on Gaua. A book of traditional stories, monolingual in Olrat language (site of linguist A. François) Access to audio recordings in Olrat language (section of the Pangloss Collection, CNRS)