| Vurës | |
| Also Known As: | Vureas |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /βyˈrœs/ |
| States: | Vanuatu |
| Region: | Vanua Lava |
| Date: | 2016 |
| Ref: | e25 |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Fam3: | Oceanic |
| Fam4: | Southern Oceanic |
| Fam5: | North-Central Vanuatu |
| Fam6: | North Vanuatu |
| Fam7: | Torres-Banks |
| Iso3: | msn |
| Iso3comment: | (shared with Mwesen) |
| Glotto: | vure1239 |
| Glottorefname: | Vures |
| Map: | Lang Status 99-NE.svg |
Vurës (Vureas, Vures) is an Oceanic language spoken in the southern area of Vanua Lava Island, in the Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu, by about 2000 speakers.
Vurës was described by linguist Catriona Malau, in the form of a grammar and a dictionary.
The name Vurës pronounced as /βyˈrœs/ is named after the bay located in southwestern Vanua Lava in the language itself. In Mota, the bay is referred to as Vureas pronounced as /βureas/. Cognates in other Torres-Banks languages include Mwotlap Vuyes pronounced as /βuˈjɛs/ and Mwesen Vures pronounced as /βuˈrɛs/. These come from a reconstructed Proto-Torres–Banks form *βureas(i,u), with an unknown final high vowel.
Vurës shows enough similarities with the neighbouring language Mwesen that the two have sometimes been considered dialects of a single language, sometimes called Mosina (after the name of Mwesen village in the language Mota). And indeed, a 2018 glottometric study has calculated that Vurës and Mwesen share 85% of their historical innovations, revealing a long history of shared development between these two lects.[1]
However, studies have shown that Mwesen and Vurës have various dissimilarities, e.g. in their vowel systems, in their noun articles, in their pronoun paradigms — enough to be considered clearly distinct.
| Labial- velar | Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ (q) | pronounced as /link/ (t) | pronounced as /link/ (k) | (pronounced as /link/) | |||
| prenasal | pronounced as /link/ (b) | pronounced as /link/ (d) | ||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ (m̄) | pronounced as /link/ (m) | pronounced as /link/ (n) | pronounced as /link/ (n̄) | ||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ (v) | pronounced as /link/ (s) | pronounced as /link/ (g) | |||||
| Liquid | rhotic | pronounced as /link/ (r) | ||||||
| lateral | pronounced as /link/ (l) | |||||||
| Semivowel | pronounced as /link/ (w) | |||||||
Vurës has 9 phonemic vowels. These are all short monophthongs pronounced as //i e ɛ a œ ø y ɔ o//:
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | round | |||
| Close | pronounced as /link/ (i) | pronounced as /link/ (u) | (pronounced as /link/) (u) | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ (ē) | pronounced as /link/ (ö) | pronounced as /link/ (ō) | |
| Open-mid | pronounced as /link/ (e) | pronounced as /link/ (ë) | pronounced as /link/ (o) | |
| Open | pronounced as /link/ (a) | |||
La masawre i no no gö mörös nana qan̄ris o qiat, nana qēs o ralēt, qēs lēt lēt qēt, na van me, na sēs o um. Na sēs qēt o um, nana le o ralēt, na tuwegev. No mö tuwegev kal qēt, nana bun kēl o vet ni van lē m̄ēkē qan̄ris, bun bun qēt o vet, mē qēt na ukëg o ev ni ës ti.