Nese: a diminishing speech variety of Northwest Malakula ( Vanuatu )

Terry Crowley (edited by John Lynch)

PL 577

This is one of four monographs on Malakula languages that Terry Crowley had been working on at the time of his sudden death in January 2005. One of the monographs, Naman: a vanishing language of Malakula ( Vanuatu ) , had been submitted to Pacific Linguistics a couple of weeks earlier. The remaining three, including the current volume, were in various stages of completion, and John Lynch was asked by the Board of Pacific Linguistics to prepare all four for publication, both as a memorial to Terry and because of the valuable data they contain.

Nese (also meaning ‘what') is the name of the language variety that was traditionally spoken along the northwestern coast of Malakula, Vanuatu (see Map 1) in the area commonly referred to as Matanvat, from the modern village of Lerrongrrong in the north to Tontarrasak in the south, and inland for four or five kilometres. Its traditional southerly neighbour is Najit, spoken in the area of Tanmial, while to the northeast along the coast is the traditional area of the Naha (‘what') speech community, a variety of which is now spoken in the village of Vovo . A further variety—for which no name has yet been recorded—is associated with the Alovas area further to the east along the northern coast of Malakula. Finally, a variety known as Njav originates from the area inland from Tanmial to the east and south of Alovas, though its speakers have relocated to the small village of Tanmaliliv in the Espiegles Bay area.

These five communalects exhibit substantially differing degrees of linguistic viability. The Naha communalect of Vovo village is actively spoken, and based on the 1989 census figures, it possibly has around 170 speakers today. The communalect of Alovas reportedly has only about 15 speakers left, with the population of this village having shifted substantially to Naha , bringing the total population of Naha speakers today to about 225. Njav is reportedly still the daily language of the small village of Tanmaliliv . It had an estimated 10 speakers in 1989. Najit is moribund, though in this case the replacement language is the Espiegles Bay variety of what is referred to in the literature as the Malua Bay language.

Finally, Nese—the subject of the present study—is also moribund, being actively spoken only in the small hamlet known locally as Matanvat SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) by a single extended family consisting of two brothers and their wives, along with their children and their parents. There are speakers of Nese also to be found in the small villages of Lerrongrrong, Tontarr, Senbukhas and Tontarrasak, though the dominant language of these communities is now Bislama. Bislama has come to be the dominant language as a result of extensive settlement of the Matanvat area by people from other parts of Malakula. Of the entire Matanvat area population of about 400 today, only five families represent the original population of the area, and the total number of speakers of Nese is probably no more than 20. Children are no longer learning this speech variety, and most adults in the Matanvat area now seldom use it even when speaking with their own relatives with whom they share a knowledge of Nese.

2006 ISBN 0858835665
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