| Ndrumbea | |
| Nativename: | Naa Dubea |
| States: | New Caledonia |
| Region: | Southern tip outside Nouméa (Paita on the west coast, Ounia on the east coast) |
| Speakers: | 2,000 |
| Date: | 1996 census |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Fam3: | Oceanic |
| Fam4: | Southern Oceanic |
| Fam5: | New Caledonian – Loyalties |
| Fam6: | New Caledonian |
| Fam7: | Southern |
| Fam8: | Extreme Southern |
| Iso3: | duf |
| Glotto: | dumb1241 |
| Glottorefname: | Dumbea |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Map: | Lang Status 80-VU.svg |
Ndrumbea, variously spelled Dumbea, Ndumbea, Dubea, Drubea and Païta, is a New Caledonian language that gave its name to the capital of New Caledonia, Nouméa, and the neighboring town of Dumbéa. It has been displaced to villages outside the capital, with fewer than a thousand speakers remaining. Gordon (1995) estimates that there may only be two or three hundred. The Dubea are the people; the language has been called Naa Dubea (or more precisely Ṇã́ã Ṇḍùmbea) "language of Dubea".
Ndrumbea is one of the few Austronesian languages that is tonal, and it has a series of consonants that are also unusual for the region.
Ndrumbea, like its close relative Numee, is a tonal language, with three contrasting tones, high, mid, and low.
Ndrumbea has seven oral vowels, long and short. The mid front vowels are lower when short than long: pronounced as //i e ɛ a o ʊ u/; /iː ɪː eː aː oː ʊː uː//. There are five nasal vowels, also long and short: pronounced as //ĩ ẽ ã õ ũ/; /ĩː ẽː ãː õː ũː//. These interact with nasal consonants, described below. Back vowels do not occur after labialized consonants, pronounced as //ŋ//, or pronounced as //ɣ//. In addition to the complementary correlation of nasal vowels with nasal consonants, nasal vowels do not occur after pronounced as //j, ɽ, ɣ//. pronounced as //ɣ//–oral vowel derives historically from pronounced as /ŋ/–nasal vowel.
Phonetically, a stop–flap consonant cluster will be separated by an obscure epenthetic vowel with the quality of the following phonemic vowel.
| +Vowel Phonemes | ||||||||||||
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /ĩː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /ũː/ | ||||
| Near-close | pronounced as /ɪː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /ʊː/ | |||||||||
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /ẽː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /õː/ | ||||
| Open-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /ãː/ | ||||||||
Nasal vowels once contrasted after nasal stops, as they still do in Numee. However, in Ndrumbea, nasal stops partially denasalized before oral vowels, so that now prenasalized stops precede oral vowels, and nasal stops precede nasal vowels. Similarly, pronounced as //j// only occurs before oral vowels.
| Labial | Dental/Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /ᵐbʷ/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /n̠/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ ᵑɡʷ | |
| Plosive | prenasalized | |||||||
| voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /t/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
The fricatives pronounced as //v, ɣ// are sometimes realized as approximants pronounced as /[ʋ, ɰ]/. However, the approximants pronounced as //w, j// are never fricated. The nasal stop pronounced as //n̠// sometimes has incomplete closure, producing a nasalized approximant pronounced as /[ȷ̃]/. The pronounced as //ɽ// is most often a tap pronounced as /[ɽ]/, sometimes an approximant pronounced as /[ɻ]/, and occasionally an alveolar tap or trill, pronounced as /[ɾ]/ or pronounced as /[r]/. It does not occur word initially, and does not contrast with pronounced as //ɳ// word medially. It tends to be nasalized before a nasal vowel, pronounced as /[ɽ̃] ~ [ɳ̆] ~ [ɻ̃]/ with the nasality spreading to preceding vowels: pronounced as //t̠ɽáɽẽ// "to run" has been recorded as pronounced as /[t̠<sup>á</sup>ɽ̃ã́ɻ̃ẽ]/.
Ndrumbea contrasts three coronal places, articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue contacting the roof of the mouth: pronounced as //t̪//, pronounced as //ʈ//, pronounced as //t̠// and their nasal homologs. pronounced as //ʈ// is apical, in contrast to laminal pronounced as //t̠//. It is not clear if pronounced as //t̪// is apico-dental or denti-alveolar, but it has a sharp release burst. pronounced as //ʈ//, on the other hand, has a noisy release and approaches an affricate, pronounced as /[ʈᶳ]/. It may actually be closer to an alveolar than post-alveolar, and appears to be enunciated more forcefully than pronounced as //t̪//. pronounced as //t̠// also has a fricated release, and for many speakers this is longer than that of pronounced as //ʈ//. All consonants labeled as Dental or Postalveolar (with the exception of pronounced as //j//) are coronal consonants.