| Ndrumbea | |
|---|---|
| Naa Dubea | |
| Native to | New Caledonia |
| Region | Southern tip outsideNouméa (Paita on the west coast, Ounia on the east coast) |
Native speakers | (2,000 cited 1996 census)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | duf |
| Glottolog | dumb1241 |
 Ndrumbea is classified as Vulnerable by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger. | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Ndrumbea, variously spelledDumbea,Ndumbea,Dubea,Drubea andPaïta, is aNew Caledonian language that gave its name to the capital of New Caledonia,Nouméa, and the neighboring town ofDumbéa; it is also spoken in the nearby region ofPaïta.[2] It however 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 fewAustronesian languages that istonal, and it has a series of consonants that are also unusual for the region.
Ndrumbea, like its close relativeNumee, 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:/ieɛaoʊu/;/iːɪːeːaːoːʊːuː/. There are fivenasal vowels, also long and short:/ĩẽãõũ/;/ĩːẽːãːõːũː/. These interact with nasal consonants, described below. Back vowels do not occur after labialized consonants,/ŋ/, or/ɣ/. In addition to the complementary correlation of nasal vowels with nasal consonants, nasal vowels do not occur after/j,ɽ,ɣ/./ɣ/–oral vowel derives historically fromŋ–nasal vowel.
Phonetically, a stop–flap consonant cluster will be separated by an obscureepenthetic vowel with the quality of the following phonemic vowel.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |||||||
| short | long | short | long | short | long | short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | i | iː | ĩ | ĩː | u | uː | ũ | ũː | ||||
| Near-close | ɪː | ʊ | ʊː | |||||||||
| Close-mid | e | eː | ẽ | ẽː | o | oː | õ | õː | ||||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɛ̃ | ||||||||||
| Open | a | aː | ã | ãː | ||||||||
Nasal vowels once contrasted afternasal stops, as they still do in Numee. However, in Ndrumbea, nasal stops partially denasalized before oral vowels, so that nowprenasalized stops precede oral vowels, and nasal stops precede nasal vowels. Similarly,/j/ only occurs before oral vowels.
The fricatives/v,ɣ/ are sometimes realized as approximants[ʋ,ɰ]. However, the approximants/w,j/ are never fricated. The nasal stop/n̠/ sometimes has incomplete closure, producing a nasalized approximant[ȷ̃]. The/ɽ/ is most often a tap[ɽ], sometimes an approximant[ɻ], and occasionally an alveolar tap or trill,[ɾ] or[r]. It does not occur word initially, and does not contrast with/ɳ/ word medially. It tends to be nasalized before a nasal vowel,[ɽ̃]~[ɳ̆]~[ɻ̃] with the nasality spreading to preceding vowels:/t̠ɽáɽẽ/ "to run" has been recorded as[t̠áɽ̃ã́ɻ̃ẽ].
Ndrumbea contrasts threecoronal places, articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue contacting the roof of the mouth:/t̪/,/ʈ/,/t̠/ and their nasal homologs./ʈ/ isapical, in contrast tolaminal/t̠/. It is not clear if/t̪/ is apico-dental ordenti-alveolar, but it has a sharp release burst./ʈ/, on the other hand, has a noisy release and approaches an affricate,[ʈᶳ]. It may actually be closer to an alveolar than post-alveolar, and appears to be enunciated more forcefully than/t̪/./t̠/ also has a fricated release, and for many speakers this is longer than that of/ʈ/. All consonants labeled as Dental or Postalveolar (with the exception of/j/) arecoronal consonants.
