Drehu ([ɖehu]; also known as Dehu,[2] Lifou,[3] Lifu,[4] qene drehu[5]) is an Austronesian language mostly spoken on Lifou Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. It has about 12,000 fluent speakers and the status of a French regional language. This status means that pupils can take it as an optional topic for the baccalauréatinNew Caledonia itself or on the French mainland.[6] It has been also taught at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris since 1973 and at the University of New Caledonia[7] since 2000. Like other Kanak languages, Drehu is regulated by the Académie des langues kanak, founded in 2007.
| Drehu | |
|---|---|
| Region | Lifou, New Caledonia |
Native speakers | unknown; est. 13,000 includes many L2 speakers (2009)[1] |
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dhv |
| Glottolog | dehu1237 |
Drehu is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. | |
A separate register of Drehu, known as qene miny, was once used to speak to chiefs (joxu). Very few Drehu speakers know qene miny today.[8]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | e eː | ø øː | o oː |
| Open | æ æː | ɑ ɑː |
/e/ is heard as [ɛ] before nasals.
/ø/ can sometimes be [e] before nasals.
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Alveopalatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | voiceless | m̥ | n̥ | ɲ̊ | ŋ̊ | |||
| voiced | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||
| Stops and affricates |
voiceless | p | t | ʈ | t͡ʃ | k | ||
| voiced | b[a] | d | ɖ | d͡ʒ[a] | ɡ | |||
| Fricatives | voiceless | f | θ | s | x | h | ||
| voiced | v[a] | ð | z | |||||
| Approximants | voiceless | ʍ | l̥ | |||||
| voiced | w | l | ||||||
Drehu was first written in the Latin script by the Polynesian[9] and English missionaries of the London Missionary Society during the 1840s, with the help of the natives. The first complete Bible was published in 1890. The Bible writing system didn't distinguish between the dental (written "d", "t") and the alveolar/retroflex ("dr" and "tr") consonants, which for a long time were written indifferently "d" and "t". In Drehu /θ/ and /ð/ are not dental but interdental consonants. The new writing system was created during the 1970s.
| Grapheme-phoneme correspondance | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grapheme | a | aa | b | c | d | dj | dr | e | ee | ë | ëë | f | g | h | hl | hm | hn | hng | hny | i | ii | j | k | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phoneme | /ɑ/ | /ɑː/ | /b/ | /c/ | /d̪/ | /ɟ/ | /d/ | /e/ | /eː/ | /ɛ/ | /ɛː/ | /f/ | /g/ | /h/ | /l̥/ | /m̥/ | /n̥/ | /ŋ̊/ | /ɲ̊/ | /i/ | /iː/ | /ð/ | /k/ | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Grapheme | l | m | n | ng | ny | o | oo | ö | öö | p | q | r | s | sh | t | th | tr | u | uu | v | w | x | z | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phoneme | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /ŋ/ | /ɲ/ | /o/ | /oː/ | /ʌ/ | /ʌː/ | /p/ | /w̥/ | /r/ | /s/ | /ʃ/ | /t/ | /θ/ | /t/ | /u/ | /uː/ | /v/ | /w/ | /x/ | /z/ | |||||||||||||||||||||||
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008)
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Singular
Dual
Plural
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