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Northeast Malakula
Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Malakula
Native speakers	9,000 (2001)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu Central Vanuatu Malakula Malakula Coastal Northeast Malakula
Language codes
ISO 639-3	upv
Glottolog	urip1239
Northeast Malakula is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Northeast Malakula, or Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin, is a dialect chain spoken on the islands of Uripiv, Wala, Rano, and Atchin and on the mainland opposite to these islands. Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin is spoken today by about 9,000 people. Literacy rate of its speakers in their own language is 10–30%.

Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin forms a dialect chain. The Uripiv dialect is the most southerly of these and has 85% of its words in common with Atchin, the most northerly dialect. Uripiv is spoken on the north-east coast of Malakula.

The Uripiv dialect is one of the few documented languages that use the rare bilabial trill, a feature that is not found in the Atchin dialect.

Phonology

Consonants

• The sound /ⁿᵈr/ is considered rare, and its phonemic status is unclear.

• Some speakers may pronounce sounds /s, ts/ as in free variation.

Vowels

Uripiv vowels

	Front		Central	Back
Close	i			u
Mid	e	ø		o
Open			a

Atchin vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ʉ	u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	œ
Open		a

• Sounds /e, o, œ/ are heard as in unstressed closed-syllable position.

References

1. Northeast Malakula at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. ^ Lynch, John (2020). The Phonological History of Uripiv, an Eastern Malakula Language. Language & Linguistics in Melanesia 38. pp. 10–37.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
3. ^ Duhamel, Marie (2010). The Noun Phrase of Atchin: A language of Malakula Vanuatu (PDF). University of Auckland.

Further reading

• Duhamel, Marie (2015) Ethnolinguistic vitality of the language of Atchin, central Vanuatu: A survey of the language's status, institutional support and demography. Fourth International Workshop on the Sociolinguistics of Language Endangerment. Payap University.

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