Olrat language

Not to be confused with OLRAT.

Olrat
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Gaua
Native speakers	3 (2012)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic Vanuatu Northern Vanuatu East Vanuatu Olrat
Language codes
ISO 639-3	olr
Glottolog	None

Olrat is a moribund Oceanic language spoken on Gaua island in Vanuatu.

The three remaining speakers of Olrat live on the middle-west coast of Gaua. They merged into the larger village of Jōlap where Lakon is dominant, after they left their inland hamlet of Olrat in the first half of the 20th century.

Alexandre François identifies Olrat as a distinct language from its immediate neighbor Lakon, on phonological, grammatical, and lexical grounds.

Phonology

Olrat has 14 phonemic vowels. These include 7 short /i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ u/ and 7 long vowels /iː ɪː ɛː aː ɔː ʊː uː/.

Olrat vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Near-close	i ∙ iː		u ∙ uː
Close-mid	ɪ ∙ ɪː		ʊ ∙ ʊː
Open-mid	ɛ ∙ ɛː		ɔ ∙ ɔː
Open		a ∙ aː

Historically, the phonologization of vowel length originates in the compensatory lengthening of short vowels when the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ was lost syllable-finally.

Bibliography

• .

External links

• Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Olrat on Gaua.
• A book of traditional stories, monolingual in Olrat language (site of linguist A. François)
• Access to audio recordings in Olrat language (section of the Pangloss Collection of LACITO-CNRS)
• Petition to create ISO code for Olrat