Nemi language

Nemi
Nemi
Native to	Hienghène, New Caledonia
Native speakers	910 (2009 census)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic New Caledonian – Loyalties New Caledonian Northern New Caledonian North Northern Nemi languages Nemi; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nem
Glottolog	nemi1240
ELP	Nemi
	Nemi is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

The Nemi language is a Kanak language of the Austronesian language family spoken by 320 people in the north of New Caledonia, in the commune of Hienghène. Dialects include Ouanga, Ouélis, and Kavatch.^[2]

Sample audio of spoken Nemi (intro and last part are French)

Phonology

The phonology of Nemi is as follows:^[3]

Consonants
			Labiovelar	Labial	Apical	Sibilant	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Occlusive	Nasal	voiced	mʷ	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
	Nasal	voiceless	m̥ʷ	m̥	n̥		ɲ̥	—
	Demi-nasal	prenasalized	ᵐbʷ	ᵐb	ⁿd		ᶮɟ	ᵑɡ
	Demi-nasal	postnasalized	pᵐʷ	pᵐ	tⁿ		cᶮ	kᵑ
	Oral	tenuis	pʷ	p	t		c	k
	Oral	aspirated	(pʷʰ)	pʰ	tʰ		—	kʰ
Continuant	Oral	voiced	w	v	l^[a]		j	ɣ^[b]
	Oral	voiceless	w̥	f	l̥^[a]	s	j̥		h
	Nasal	voiced	w̃
	Nasal	voiceless	w̥̃						h̃
	Vibrant				r^[b]

^ ^a ^b Rare in initial position.
^ ^a ^b Phonemic in medial position only.

The 'labiovelar' consonants are velarized bilabial occlusives and labial-velar approximants.^{[citation needed]} The phoneme /s/ possibly corresponds to an etymological /cʰ/, a phonological gap.

Some speakers have a simplified inventory of consonants in medial position, with oral occlusives and voiceless continuants generally merging into voiced continuants and (in the case of alveolars) the vibrant, and postnasalized and voiceless nasal occlusives into voiced nasals, with the exception of loanwords. For those speakers, a similar allophonic free variation can also produce [k~ɣ], [t~r], and [tʰ~r̥] in initial positions in less careful speech.

In final position, only eight phonemes contrast: /m n ɲ ŋ p t c k/.

Vowels
	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
High	i	iː			u	uː
Mid	e	eː			o	oː
Low			a	aː

Vowels may be allophonically nasalized before prenasalized consonants and after nasal and postnasalized consonants. The vowel /u/ is fronted before /v/.

Lexical stress generally falls on the initial syllable.

References

^ Nemi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Isabelle Bril, Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre, Complex Predicates in Oceanic Languages: Studies in the Dynamics of Binding and Boundness (2012), p. 389.
^ Rivierre, Françoise (1975). "Phonologie du némi (Nouvelle-Calédonie) et notes sur les consonnes postnasalisées". Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris (in French). 70 (1): 345–356.

Bibliography

Haudricourt, André-Georges; Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise (1982). Dictionnaire thématique des langues de la région de Hienghène (Nouvelle-Calédonie) : pije, fwâi, nemi, jawe. Précédé d'une phonologie comparée des langues de Hienghène et du proto-océanien. Paris: Société d'Etudes Linguistiques et Anthropologiques de France. p. 285. ISBN 978-2852971349.

External links

Information about the Nemi language Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine

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[rare-4] Rare in initial position.

[medial-5] Phonemic in medial position only.

[e18-1] Nemi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

[2] Isabelle Bril, Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre, Complex Predicates in Oceanic Languages: Studies in the Dynamics of Binding and Boundness (2012), p. 389.

[3] Rivierre, Françoise (1975). "Phonologie du némi (Nouvelle-Calédonie) et notes sur les consonnes postnasalisées". Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris (in French). 70 (1): 345–356.

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