Vurës language

Vurës (Vureas, Vures) is an Oceanic language spoken in the southern area of Vanua Lava Island, in the Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu, by about 2000 speakers.

Vurës was described by linguist Catriona Malau, in the form of a grammar and a dictionary.

Name
The name Vurës is named after the bay located in southwestern Vanua Lava in the language itself. In Mota, the bay is referred to as Vureas. Cognates in other Torres-Banks languages include Mwotlap Vuyes and Mwesen Vures. These come from a reconstructed Proto-Torres–Banks form *βureas(i,u), with an unknown final high vowel.

Dialectology
Vurës shows enough similarities with the neighbouring language Mwesen that the two have sometimes been considered dialects of a single language, sometimes called Mosina (after the name of Mwesen village in the language Mota). And indeed, a 2018 glottometric study has calculated that Vurës and Mwesen share 85% of their historical innovations, revealing a long history of shared development between these two lects.

However, studies have shown that Mwesen and Vurës have various dissimilarities, e.g. in their vowel systems, in their noun articles, in their pronoun paradigms — enough to be considered clearly distinct.

Consonants

 * is also heard as a tap in free variation.
 * A glottal stop only rarely occurs in some words.
 * is heard as before a voiceless stop.
 * is heard as when preceding another consonant.
 * Stop sounds are aspirated  before vowels.

Vowels
Vurës has 9 phonemic vowels. These are all short monophthongs :


 * is only a marginal sound that occurs in a small amount of words, mostly borrowings.
 * The vowel inventory also includes a diphthong $⟨q⟩$.

Sample text
La masawre i no no gö mörös nana qan̄ris o qiat, nana qēs o ralēt, qēs lēt lēt qēt, na van me, na sēs o um. Na sēs qēt o um, nana le o ralēt, na tuwegev. No mö tuwegev kal qēt, nana bun kēl o vet ni van lē m̄ēkē qan̄ris, bun bun qēt o vet, mē qēt na ukëg o ev ni ës ti.

When I want to bake taro, I break up the firewood, break up all the firewood, then I come and I take the stones out of the oven. I take out all the stones from the oven, I get the firewood, and I make the fire. I build up the fire, then I put the stones back on top of the oven, I put all the stones back, then I leave the fire to smoke.