| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
| Gilbertese | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Kiribati, Fiji, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tuvalu |
| Total speakers: | 102,000 |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Kiribati |
| Regulated by: | Kiribati Language Board |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | - |
| ISO 639-2 | gil |
| SIL | GLB |
Gilbertese or Kiribati (sometimes Kiribatese, a mixture of both) is a language from the Austronesian family, part of the Oceanian branch and of the Nuclear Micronesian subbranch. It is a verb object subject language.
About 105,000 people speak Gilbertese, 98,000 of whom live in Kiribati, about 97.2% of the entire population. The other are the inhabitants of Nui ( Tuvalu), of Rabi ( Fiji) and some other islands where Gilbertese have been relocated Solomon and Vanuatu or emigrated ( New Zealand and HawaiiFor the 1959 novel and 1966 movie, see Hawaii (novel). Hawaii ( Hawaiian/ Hawaiian English: Hawai‘i with the ‘okina is the archipelago of the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii constitutes the 50th state of the United States, and as of the 2000 mainly).
Unlike many in the Pacific region, Gilbertese is far from extinct, and just about all speakers use it daily. Only 30% of Gilbertese speakers are fully bilingual with EnglishThe English language is a West Germanic language, originating from England. It is the third most common "first" language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the mil, meaning that the language is in no current danger of being swallowed by English.
Fishermen, sailorA sailor is a member of the crew of a ship or boat. The term may comprise anyone from an admiral in the navy to a person who goes out yachting at weekends as a hobby. A sailor is also specifically an enlisted member of a naval force. The term can be useds, farmA farm is the basic unit in agriculture. It is a section of land devoted to the production and management of food, either produce or livestock. It may be an enterprise owned and operated by a single individual, family, or community, or it may be owned byers, and people involved in the production of copra comprise the majority of Gilbertese speakers.A dialect called Banaban exists.
Gilbertese is written in the Latin alphabet, and has been since the 1840s, when Hiram Bingham Jr, a missionary, first translated the Bible into Gilbertese and required an alphabet in which to write it. 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 (only heard in the myths from Samoa). Bingham decided to use " hilly", which would be more easily understood.
Catholic missionaries would later arrive at the islands 1888 and translate the Bible independently of Bingham, resulting in differences (Bingham wrote Jesus as "Iesu", while the Catholics wrote "Ietu") that would only be resolved in the 20th century (No 's' in the Gilbertese alphabet). The best and translated into English Gilbertese Dictionary has been published by Father Ernest Sabatier in 1954: Dictionnaire Gilbertin-Français, 900p. (edited by South Pacific Commission in 1971).