From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meriam (in the language itself Meriam
Mìr; also Miriam,
Meryam, Mer,
Mir, Miriam-Mir, etc. and
Eastern, Isten,
Esten and The Eastern Torres Strait
Language, Able Able) is the language of
Meriam people of
Mer (Murray Island),
Waier and Dauar,
Erub (Darnley Island) and
Ugar (Stephens Island) in the Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. In the
Western-Central Lanbguage of Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya), it
is generally called Mœyam, or Mœyamau
Ya.
Classification
Although Meriam is located in Australian territory, it is
classified as a Papuan language, not an Australian language. It has, however,
around 25 percent common vocabulary with its Torres Strait Island
neighbour Kala Lagaw
Ya, which is an Australian language. There are some very minor
Rotuman
language from the erstwhile substantial community of Rotuman people as
well as other Melanesian, Polynesian, Indonesian, Japanese and
other influences in the form of vocabulary. Many such outsiders
were recruited - or in some cases black-birded - in the
19th century for pearl diving, and other marine work.
Meriam was placed in the Eastern Trans-Fly family of
Trans–New Guinea by Stephen Wurm, who
however felt that these have retained remnants of pre-TransNG
languages, and this is followed by Ethnologue (2005). In 2005 Malcolm Ross
concluded that the Eastern Trans-Fly languages were not part of the
Trans–New Guinea phylum, but kept the family itself with Meriam as
a member. R.M.W. Dixon (2002) regards claims of a
relationship between the Fly River languages and Meriam as
unproven, though what he bases his claim on is not clear, as Meriam
Mir has a high cognation rate with its sister language, and a
certain amount of mutual intelligibility is claimed by Meriam
speakers. Such cognates include the personal pronouns, verbs,
nominals, verbal and nominal morphology, cultural vocabulary, and
so on.
The other Eastern Trans-Fly languages are Bine, Gizra, and Wipii
(also known as Gidra).
Dialects
The language is dialectless. However, formerly there was a
separate dialect spoken on Erub and Ugar, characterised in part by
the retention of 'ng' and 'n' in distinction to 'g'/'n' and 'r'.
These have fallen together in Modern Meriam, thus 'ng' becoming 'n'
at the beginning of words and 'g' within words, and 'n' in general
becoming 'r'. As examples, the earliest records (early 1800s) of
Meriam Mìr, which were actually in the Erub dialect, Erubim Mìr,
included the phrase debe lang good
taste/nice, where lang is cognate with the
Gizra lang of the same meaning. In present-day
Meriam Mìr the phrase is debe lag. Similar changes
were Erub ngenkep, Mer nerkep
heart (ngen/ner
breath, kep body part, cf. Kala
Lagaw Ya ngœnakap[u] ngœna
breath + kap[u] body part), Erub
denger, Mer deger dugong
(cf. Kala Lagaw Ya dhangal) and Erub
ngeng, Mer neg, Bine
ngango laugh.
Phonology
Vowels
The sounds represented by [a] and [ə] are allophonic. Schwa
appears in mainly syllables BEFORE the stress accent in words and
in optionally in open unstressed syllables otherwise. [a] appears
in stressed syllables and in unstressed closed syllables.
Consonants
Stress
Stress is contrastive in Meriam
and can occur on the first or second syllable. Examples are
tábo snake and tabó
neck
References
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