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Raga
Hano
Pronunciation	[raɣa]
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Pentecost Island
Native speakers	6,500 (2001)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu North Vanuatu Raga
Writing system	Latin script Avoiuli
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lml
Glottolog	hano1246
Raga is not endangered according to the classification system of theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Raga (also known asHano) is the language of northernPentecost Island inVanuatu. Like all Vanuatu languages, Raga belongs to theOceanic subgroup of theAustronesian languages family. In old sources the language is sometimes referred to by the names of villages in which it is spoken, such as Bwatvenua (Qatvenua), Lamalanga, Vunmarama and Loltong.

It is the most conservative language of Pentecost Island, having preserved final vowels while also retaining the five-vowel system inherited fromProto-Oceanic, compared to other languages spoken on the island, which have all developed additional vowels in addition to pervasive vowel deletion.

With an estimated 6,500 native speakers (in the year 2000), Raga is the second most widely spoken of Pentecost's five native languages (afterApma), and the seventh largest vernacular in Vanuatu as a whole. There are significant communities of Raga speakers onMaewo island and inPort Vila andLuganville as a result of emigration from Pentecost.Walter Lini, the independence leader of Vanuatu, was a native Raga speaker.

The Raga spoken by most people today is heavily mixed withBislama, Vanuatu's national language. TheTuraga indigenous movement, based at Lavatmanggemu in north-eastern Pentecost, have attempted to purge the language of foreign influences by coining or rediscovering native words for introduced concepts such as "torch battery" (vat bongbongi, literally "night stones") and "hour" (ngguha, literally "movement"). Members of the Turaga movement write in Raga language usingAvoiuli, a unique writing system inspired by localsand drawings.

Raga is generally considered an easy language to speak and learn, and is known as a second language by a number of speakers of other Vanuatu languages.

Modern Raga is relatively homogeneous, with no significant dialectal variation. A distinctive southern dialect of Raga,Nggasai, is now extinct; its last native speaker died in 1999.

Several grammatical sketches, vocabulary lists and short papers on Raga have been published, beginning with the work ofR H Codrington andvon der Gabelentz in the late 19th century, and a number of religious texts have been translated into the language.

The nameRaga refers to the native name ofPentecost Island in the language, which can appear with the locative markera-, givingAraga. InTamambo, spoken inMalo Island, a cognate formAraha refers to the same island.^[2] The nameHano literally means "what".

Theconsonants of Raga are as follows,

In this article, the sounds/ŋ/ and/ᵑɡ/ (like theng of 'singer' and 'finger', respectively), which are writtenn̄ andḡ in standard orthography, are writtenng andngg.G is typically pronounced like thech in Scottish "loch".

Prenasalization of the voiced plosives, such thatb becomesmb (always voiced) andd becomesnd, occurs when the preceding consonant is nasal (m,n orng). Thusmabu "rest" is pronouncedmambu.

V, vw arelabiodental, unlike inApma to the immediate south, where they are bilabial[β,w]. Descriptions describev as[v] andg as[x] more commonly than as[f] or[ɣ], but there is evidently some variation.

/ɾ/ can be in free variation with a trill[r].^[3]

Raga has the five basicvowels/i,e,a,o,u/. Vowels are not generally distinguished for length.

Word roots in Raga nearly always end with a vowel. However, word-final vowels are often dropped within phrases, so that, for example,tanga "basket" andmaita "white" combine to maketang maita "white basket".

Stress occurs on the penultimate syllable of a word.

Basic word order in Raga issubject–verb–object.

Personal pronouns are distinguished byperson andnumber. They are not distinguished bygender. The basic pronouns are as follows:

Plurality is indicated by placingira before a noun:

manu = [the] bird

ira manu = [the] birds

Nouns may be suffixed to indicate whom an item belongs to. For example:

iha = name

ihaku = my name

ihamwa = your name

ihana = his/her name

ihan ratahigi = the chief's name

Possession may also be indicated by the use ofpossessive classifiers, separate words that occur before the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers are:

• no- for general possessions (nonggu tanga, "my basket")
• bila- for things that are cared for, such as crops and livestock (bilada boe, "our pig")
• ga- for things to be eaten (gam bweta, "your taro")
• ma- for things to be drunk (mara wai, "their water")

Historically there was also a classifierwa- for sugarcane to be chewed (wan toi, "his sugarcane"); this has fallen out of use among younger speakers.

The possessive suffixes are as follows:

A verb may be transformed into a noun by the addition of anominalising suffix-ana:

bwalo = to fight (verb)

bwaloana = a fight (noun)

Modifiers generally come after a noun:

vanua = island

vanua kolo = small island

vanua gairua = two islands

Verbs in Raga are usually preceded by a subject pronoun and by atense–aspect–mood marker.

The subject pronouns are as follows:

There is no 3rd person singular subject pronoun ("he/she/it").

Raga has five sets of tense–aspect–mood markers:

The full forms of these markers are used in the 3rd person singular, when there is usually no subject pronoun:

mwa lolia = he does it

nu lolia = he did it

vi lolia = he will do it

Elsewhere, short forms of these markers are suffixed to the subject pronoun:

nam lolia = I do it

nan lolia = I did it

nav lolia = I will do it

There are alsodual (two-person) forms incorporating a particleru "two":

ram lolia = they do it

ramuru lolia = the two of them do it

Historically there weretrial (three-person) forms incorporating a particledol ortol, but these have fallen out of use.

Imperatives can consist of a verb with no marker. In third person forms, there is a markerna-:

Mai teti! = Come here!

Ihamwa na sabuga = May your name be holy

There is a pattern ofverb-consonant mutation wherebyv at the start of a verb changes tob,vw tobw,g tongg, andt tod. This mutation occurs in imperfective aspect, and in the presence of the additive markermom:

nanvano = I went

nambano = I am going

Negative sentences are indicated with the two-part markerhav...te(he) "not", which encloses the verb and anything suffixed to it:

nanhav loliatehe = I didn't do it

Thepassive voice can be formed by attaching the suffix-ana to the verb:

nu lolia = he did it

nu loliana = it was done

The direct object immediately follows the verb. Some object pronouns take the form of suffixes attached to the verb:

In some cases a particle-ni- interposes between the verb and the object pronoun:

nam doronia = I like it

• The Languages of Pentecost Island - information on Raga
• Leo huri ganisabuga Anglican Holy Communion from the Book of Common Prayer in Raga, digitized by Richard Mammana and Charles Wohlers

• Languages of Vanuatu
• Penama languages

• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
• CS1 maint: publisher location
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Pages with non-English text lacking appropriate markup and no ISO hint
• Pages with non-English text lacking appropriate markup from July 2021
• Pages with Hano IPA
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles containing Hano-language text