Meriam (in the language itself Meriam Mìr; also Miriam, Meryam, Mer, Mir, Miriam-Mir, etc. and Eastern, Isten, Esten and The Eastern Torres Strait Language) is the language of Meriam people of Mer (Murray Island), Waier and Dauar, Erub (Darnley Island) and Ugar (Stephens Island) in the Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia.

Classification

Although Meriam is located in Australian territory, it is classified as a Papuan language, not an Australian language. It has, however, around 25 percent common vocabulary with its Torres Strait Island neighbour Kala Lagaw Ya, which is an Australian language. There are some very minor Rotuman language and other Melanesian/Polynesian/Indonesian/Japanese and other influences in the form of vocabulary from the substantial community of Rotuman people and others recruited - or in some cases black-birded - in the 19th and early 20th centuries for pearl diving.

Meriam was placed in the Eastern Trans-Fly family of Trans-New Guinea by Stephen Wurm, who however felt that these have retained remnants of pre-TransNG languages, and this is followed by Ethnologue (2005). In 2005 Malcolm Ross concluded that the Eastern Trans-Fly languages were not part of the Trans-New Guinea phylum, but kept the family itself with Meriam as a member. R.M.W. Dixon (2002) regards claims of a relationship between the Fly River languages and Meriam as unproven, despite the very high cognation rate between this language and its sister language, and a certain amount of mutual intelligibility claimed by Meriam speakers.

The other Eastern Trans-Fly languages are Bine, Gizra, and Wipii (also known as Gidra).

Dialects

The language is dialectless. However, formerly there was a separate dialect spoken on Erub and Ugar, characterised by the retention of 'ng' and 'n' in distinction to 'g'/'n' and 'r'. These have fallen together in Modern Meriam, thus 'ng' becoming 'n' at the beginning of words and g within words, and 'n' in general becoming 'r'.

Phonology

Vowels

The sounds represented by [a] and [?] are allophonic. Schwa appears in mainly syllables BEFORE the stress accent in words and in optionally in open unstressed syllables otherwise. [a] appears in stressed syllables and in unstressed closed syllables.

Consonants

Stress

Stress is contrastive in Meriam and can occur on the first or second syllable. Examples are tábo snake and tabó neck

References

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:ulk

sv:Meriam (språk)