How well documented are Pentecosts languages?
Out of Pentecost’s nine surviving dialects, three or four (Raga, the Suru Mwerani dialect of Apma, and a couple of Sa dialects) have received significant study. A few examples of writing are available in these languages, and basic descriptions of have been written by missionaries and linguists (although only Suru Mwerani has been thoroughly described). The others have hardly ever been written down, either by locals or by outside researchers. And Pentecost’s many extinct dialects are not even mentioned in the available literature. The only previous linguist to take an interest in all five of Pentecost’s languages was David Walsh, who travelled around Pentecost in the 1960s and noted short vocabulary lists in the major dialect of each one. This data was used in Darrell Tryon’s 1976 survey of Vanuatu languages. Tryon’s survey was an impressive achievement, although since the author was unable to get to know each of the country’s hundred or so languages in detail, considerable errors in th
Out of Pentecost’s nine surviving dialects, three or four (Raga, the Suru Mwerani dialect of Apma, and a couple of Sa dialects) have received significant study. A few examples of writing are available in these languages, and basic descriptions have been written by missionaries and linguists. The others have hardly ever been written down, either by locals or by outside researchers. And Pentecost’s many extinct dialects are scarcely even mentioned in the available literature. The only previous linguist to take an interest in all five of Pentecost’s languages was David Walsh, who travelled around Pentecost in the 1960s and noted short vocabulary lists in the major dialect of each one. This data was used in Darrell Tryon’s 1976 survey of Vanuatu languages. Tryon’s survey was an impressive achievement, although since the author was unable to get to know each of the country’s hundred or so languages in detail, considerable errors in the vocabulary lists were inevitable. See the individual pa
