Vurës (Vureas, Vures) is an Oceanic language spoken in the southern area of Vanua Lava Island, in the Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu, by about 2000 speakers.
Vurës was described by linguist Catriona Malau, in the form of a grammar and a dictionary.
Name The name Vurës is named after the bay located in southwestern Vanua Lava in the language itself. In Mota, the bay is referred to as Vureas . Cognates in other Torres-Banks languages include Mwotlap Vuyes and Mwesen Vures . These come from a reconstructed Proto-Torres–Banks form *βureas(i,u), with an unknown final high vowel.
Dialectology Vurës shows enough similarities with the neighbouring language Mwesen that the two have sometimes been considered dialects of a single language, sometimes called Mosina (after the name of Mwesen village in the language Mota). A 2018 glottometric study has calculated that Vurës and Mwesen share 85% of their historical innovations, revealing a long history of shared development between these two lects.Kalyan & François 2018.
However, studies have shown that Mwesen and Vurës have various dissimilarities, such as in their vowel systems, in their noun articles, and in their pronoun paradigms — enough to be considered clearly distinct.
Phonology Consonants
Labial-velarLabialDentalAlveolarVelarGlottalPlosivevoiceless ()prenasal Nasal Fricative Liquidrhotic lateral Semivowel
is also heard as a tap in free variation. A glottal stop only rarely occurs in some words. is heard as before a voiceless stop. is heard as when preceding another consonant. Stop sounds are aspirated before vowels.
Vowels Vurës has 9 phonemic vowels. These are all short monophthongs :
+ Vurës vowelsFrontBackplainround Close () Close-mid Open-mid Open
is only a marginal sound that occurs in a small amount of words, mostly borrowings. The vowel inventory also includes a diphthong .
Sample text From an interview on how to bake taro:
In English: When I want to bake taro, I break up the firewood, break up all the firewood, then I come and I take the stones out of the oven. I take out all the stones from the oven, I get the firewood, and I make the fire. I build up the fire, then I put the stones back on top of the oven, I put all the stones back, then I leave the fire to smoke.
References Citations
Bibliography
External links
Vurës—English dictionary, by Catriona Malau. Audio recordings in the Vurës language, in open access, by A. François (Pangloss Collection, CNRS).