Gilbertese language

Dialects

The Gilbertese language has two main dialects, Northern and Southern. Their main differences are in the pronunciation of some sounds. The islands of Butaritari and Makin also have their own dialect that differs from the standard Kiribati in some vocabulary and pronunciation.

Dialect listing

• Banaban (Banaba and Rabi Island, Fiji)
• Northern Kiribati (Makin, Butaritari, Marakei, Abaiang, Tarawa, Maiana, Kuria, Abemama and Aranuka)
  • Butaritari/Makin (Butaritari and Makin)
• Nuian (Tuvalu)
• Southern Kiribati (Tabiteuea, Onotoa, Nonouti, Beru, Nikunau, Tamana and Arorae)

Historical sound changes

¹ Sometimes when reflecting Proto-Micronesian .
² Sometimes when reflecting Proto-Micronesian .

Phonology

Consonants

All nasal consonants have geminated counterparts.

Vowels

All vowel qualities have long vowel counterparts. The pronunciation is closer to except after velarized and . Lee & Timee (2019) describe the additional monophthongs and .

Length

Length is distinctive for vowels and plain nasal consonants but not for the remaining sounds so that ana (third person singular article) contrasts with aana (transl. its underside) as well as anna (transl. dry land). Other minimal pairs include:

Alphabet

The Gilbertese language is written in the Latin script, which was introduced in the 1860s when Hiram Bingham Jr, a Protestant missionary, first translated the Bible into Gilbertese. Until then, the language was unwritten. Since the independence of Kiribati in 1979, long vowels and consonants are represented by doubling the character, as in Dutch and Finnish. A few digraphs are used for the velar nasals () and velarized bilabials (). Bingham and the first Roman Catholic missionaries (1888) did not indicate in their script the vowel length by doubling the character. The discrepancies between the Protestant and Roman Catholic spellings have been an issue since 1895. Neither clearly distinguished the pronunciation of the vowel /a/ after velarized bilabials, like (bw) and (mw), which result in discrepancies between old scripts and modern scripts. For example, the word maneaba should be written mwaneaba or even mwaaneaba and the atoll of Makin, Mwaakin. The Kiribati Protestant Church has also recently used a different script for both velarized bilabials, “b’a” and “m’a”, which are found in Protestant publications.

Grammar

Gilbertese has a basic verb–object–subject word order (VOS).

Nouns

Gilbertese lacks a morphological noun-marker system. This means that—by itself—a noun cannot be identified as such. However, singular nouns can be distinguished from other words, as they are preceded by the article "te". However, not all singular nouns can take the article. These include names of people and places, words for cardinal directions, and other specific nouns.

Any noun can be formed from a verb or an adjective by preceding it with the article "te".

• nako (to go)
• te nako (the going)
• uraura (red)
• te uraura (the redness)

Nouns can be marked for possession (by person and number). Plurality is only marked in some nouns by lengthening the first vowel. Even then, the singular form might be used—despite plural referents—if no other indicators of their plurality are present.

• te boki (book)
• booki (books)

There is no obligatory marked gender. Sex or gender can be marked by adding mmwaane (male) or aiine (female) to the noun.

• te moa (chicken)
• te moa mmwaane (rooster) (writing mwane is more usual)
• te moa aiine (hen) (writing aine is more usual)
• tariu (my brother or my sister, if he or she has the same sex as the speaker)
• maneu (my brother or my sister, if he or she has a different sex from the speaker)

For human nouns, the linker 'n' may be used.

• ataei (child)
• ataeinimmwaane (boy)
• ataeinnaiine (girl)

Agent nouns can be created with the particle tia (singular) or taan(i) (plural).

In Gilbertese, nouns can be classified as either animate or inanimate. The category of animate nouns includes humans and most animals, whereas inanimate nouns refer to all other entities.

Possession, when the possessor is inanimate, is marked with the "n" clitic. In writing, it may be joined with the previous word, or written separately. In cases where the "n" marker would be otherwise incompatible with the language's phonotactics, one might use "in" or "ni" instead. In phrases where the possessor is animate, a special possessive pronoun needs to be employed (see Pronouns).

Nouns can also be classified as alienable or inalienable. Inalienable nouns include, among others, parts of the body, family, and feelings. Words which are newly introduced into the language are never considered to be inalienable. The meanings of certain words may vary according to whether or not they are considered alienable.

Adjectives can also be formed from nouns by reduplication with the meaning of "abundant in", e.g., karau ("rain"), kakarau ("rainy").

Articles

There are two articles used in Gilbertese:

Neither of them implies definiteness, therefore both can be translated as "a(n)" and "the".

When preceding collective nouns or names of substances, "te" can be translated as "some." A limited set of nouns, typically referring to unique entities, dispense with te. This includes words like taai “sun”, karawa “sky”, taari/marawa “sea”, among others. Interestingly, Te Atua, “God”, is an exception. The article te also acts as a nominalizer, transforming adjectives into nouns. While te marks singular nouns, the language possesses a plural article taian. However, its use is restricted to countable nouns inherently implying plurality. Collective nouns typically don't take taian. In certain situations, when plurality is evident from surrounding words, taian can be omitted.

The personal articles are used before personal names. The masculine form is 'te' before names beginning with <i, u, w, b', ng>, 'tem' before <b, m>, 'ten' before <a, e, o, n, r, t> and 'teng' before <k, (ng)>.

Pronouns

Pronouns have different forms according to case: nominative (subject), accusative (object), emphatic (vocatives, adjunct pronouns), genitive (possessives).

Demonstratives

The Gilbertese language employs a system of demonstratives to indicate the spatial proximity of the referent to the speaker. These demonstratives are postnominal, meaning they follow the noun they modify.

The feminine demonstrative has no plural form, as opposed to the masculine, and the human plural encapsulates groups of mixed gender.

Adverbial pronouns also have a three-way distinction of distance: proximal, medial and distal.

Ngke is used for hypothetical scenarios that would have an effect today, have they changed in the past. Ngkana is used for situations whereof the outcome or truth is not yet known.

Adjectives

While they share many similarities with intransitive verbs, there are a few patterns that can be observed among adjectives. Many adjectives, such as mainaina (“white”), contain a repeated element. While some non-reduplicated adjectives exist, reduplication appears to be dominant.

Nouns typically lengthen their first vowel to indicate plural. Conversely, adjectives tend to shorten their first vowel for pluralization (e.g., anaanau (long - singular) becomes ananau (long - plural)).

Gilbertese employs distinct strategies for forming comparative and superlative constructions. Comparatives are relatively straightforward, achieved by adding the adverb riki (“more”) after the adjective (e.g., ririeta (“high”) becomes ririeta riki (“higher”)). Expressing “better than” requires the preposition nakon (“than”) along with a construction that compares the noun-like qualities derived from the adjectives:

E

aki

bootau

an

aakoi

tar

im.

You are not as kind as your brother. (lit. Your kindness is not equal to that of your brother.)

Superlatives are formed with the intensifier moan and the article te preceding the adjective. For example, raoiroi (“good”) becomes moan te raoiroi (“the best”).

Verbs

Verbs do not conjugate according to person, number, tense, aspect or mood. These verbal categories are indicated by particles. Nonetheless, a passive suffix -aki is used as in:

• E kabooa te raiti He bought the rice.
• E kabooaki te raiti The rice was bought (by him).

Any adjective can also be an intransitive verb. Transitive verbs can be formed by the circumfix ka- (...) -a creating a causative verb, e.g. "uraura" (to be red) becomes "kaurauraa" (to redden). Tense is marked by adverbs. However, the default interpretation of the unmarked (by adverbs) verb is a past tense. Below is a list of verbal particles:

• a (immediate, incompleted and indeterminate)
• tabe n(i) (progressive)
• nang(i) (prospective future)
• na (general future)
• a tib'a (immediate past)
• a tia n(i) (past perfect)

Copula verbs

There are no verbs corresponding to English "to be", so a stative verb must be used or a zero copula strategy:

Te

A

tia

workman

mmwakuri

that

teuaarei.

man.

(mwakuri or even makuri are usual forms)

That man is a workman.

There is also a locative copula verb "mena":

E

mena

iaon

te

taibora

te

booro.

The ball is on the table

Existential verb

There is no corresponding verb to "to have", instead an existential verb meaning "there to be" is used - iai.

Reduplication

In verbs, reduplication is used to mark aspect.

• Partial reduplication marks the habitual aspect for example "nako" (to go) and "naanako" (to usually go).
• Full reduplication shows the continuative aspect, e.g. "koro" (to cut), "korokoro" (to continually cut).
• Mixed: "kiba" (to jump), "kiikiba" (to usually jump), "kibakiba" (to continually jump, to be excited), "kikibakiba" (to jump on regular occasions).

Negation

The main negator is the particle "aki" placed after the pronoun and before the verb. The negator "aikoa" is for counterexpected situations.

Ko aki taetae: You don't speak.

Numerals

Gilbertese uses classifiers for counting with numerals like Asian languages (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.). These classifiers are suffixes to the numerals: -ua (general, for objects), -man (animate beings), -kai (plants, land, fish hooks), -ai (fish, elongated objects), -waa (transportation), -baa (leaves, flat objects) among many others. It is a decimal system with -bwi as a "10-counting" suffix. Zero ("akea") is just the word for 'nothing'.

Conjunctions

Multiple nouns may be joined with either ao (“and”) or ma (“and; with”). To join adjectives or verb, one may use man. The conjunction ke (“or”) can be used with any part of speech.

In subordinate clauses, the main clause usually comes first, with an appropriate conjunction in-between the two.

Vocabulary

One difficulty in translating the Bible was references to words such as "mountain", a geographical phenomenon unknown to the people of the islands of Kiribati at the time, heard only in the myths from Samoa. Bingham substituted "hilly", which would be more easily understood. Such adjustments are common to all languages as "modern" things require the creation of new words or the usage of loan words.

For example, the Gilbertese word for airplane is te wanikiba, "the canoe that flies". Some words changed to translate Western words into Gilbertese. For example, te aro 'species or colour' is now used in translating religion. Te kiri 'the dog', found in 1888 vocabulary, is now less used than te kamea 'the dog' (from English, loan word).

Catholic missionaries arrived at the islands in 1888 and translated the Bible independently of Bingham, which led to differences (Bingham wrote Jesus as "Iesu", but the Catholics wrote "Ietu") that would be resolved only in the 20th century. In 1954, Father Ernest Sabatier published the larger and more accurate Kiribati to French dictionary (translated into English by Sister Olivia): Dictionnaire gilbertin–français, 981 pages (edited by South Pacific Commission in 1971). It remains the only work of importance between the Kiribati language and a Western language. It was then reversed by Frédéric Giraldi in 1995 to creating the first French-Kiribati dictionary. In addition, a grammar section was added by Father Gratien Bermond (MSC). The dictionary is available at the French National Library Rare Language Department and at the headquarters of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), Issoudun.

Loanwords

When arriving, the translation of the Bible (te Baibara) was the first duty of the missionaries. Protestants (1860) and Roman Catholics (1888) had to find or create some words that were not in use in the Gilbert Islands, like mountain (te maunga, borrowing it from Hawaiian mauna or Samoan maunga), and like serpents, but also to find a good translation for God (te Atua). Many words were adapted from English, like te moko (smoke), te buun (spoon), te beeki (pig), te raiti (rice), te tai (time, a watch), te auti (house), te katamwa (cat, from expression cat-at-me). Some words of the Swadesh list did not exist in Gilbertese like te aiti (ice) or te tinoo (snow). But things that did not exist previously also were interpreted to form new Gilbertese words: te rebwerebwe (motorbike), te wanikiba (plane, a flying canoe), te momi (pearl, from Hawaiian).