Native to Vanuatu Native speakers 3 (2012) Glottolog None | Region Gaua ISO 639-3 olr | |
Language family Austronesian
Malayo-Polynesian
Oceanic
Southern Oceanic
Vanuatu
Northern Vanuatu
East Vanuatu
Olrat | ||
Olrat is a moribund Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.
The three remaining speakers of Olrat live on the middle-west coast of Gaua. They merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant, after they left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century.
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/.
Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ was lost syllable-finally.
References
Olrat language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA