The Language
Araki is spoken today by about 8 native speakers; it is progressively being replaced by the neighbouring language of Tangoa. The rest of the island's population have a passive knowledge of Araki language, which allows them to understand it, and even make whole phrases and sentences. Nevertheless, a large portion of the Araki vocabulary, as well as idiosyncratic syntactic and phonetic phenomena of the language have been forgotten. Speakers of Araki can also speak the English-based pidgin Bislama; but this lingua franca is mainly used in the two towns of the country, Port-Vila and Luganville, and seldom in rural areas.
Araki was described in 2002 by the linguist Alexandre François.
Read more about this topic: Araki Language
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)