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This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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| Avoiuli | |
|---|---|
 A stone carved with Avoiuli writing | |
| Script type | alphabet
|
| Creator | Viraleo Boborenvanua |
Period | c. 1990 – present |
| Direction | Boustrophedon, left-to-right  |
| Languages | Raga, Bislama, Apma, other languages used in Vanuatu |
Avoiuli (from Raga avoi 'talk about' and uli 'draw' or 'paint')[1] is a writing system used by the Turaga indigenous movement on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu. It was devised by Chief Viraleo Boborenvanua over a 14-year period, based on designs found in traditional sand drawings, and intended as a native alternative to the Latin alphabet. It is used mainly for writing in the area's native Raga language, although it can also be used for writing other languages, and is sometimes used to write Apma, Bislama and even English.[2]
The Avoiuli alphabet comprises characters equivalent to the letters A–Z, decimal numerals and other symbols, including a range of currency symbols representing the livatu and specific items of traditional value such as pigs and dyed mats. Like the Western orthography used to write Raga, it represents the velar nasal ng and prenasalised consonant ngg using modified forms of the letters n and g respectively, but represents the labiovelar consonants bw, mw and vw using digraphs. Although in some respects it is a relatively straightforward imitation of the Latin alphabet, Avoiuli has a few distinctive features.[3]
Like the sand drawings on which it is based, Avoiuli words are designed to be formed in a single stroke. The script can be written either left-to-right or right-to-left (with the letter shapes reversed, though the majority are symmetrical anyway). It is intended to be written in boustrophedon style, with alternating lines of left-to-right and right-to-left writing, but it is common for it to follow the left-to-right convention of the Latin script.
Capital letters in Avoiuli are similar to lowercase but are enlarged and drawn around a + shaped 'frame', a feature also seen in traditional sand drawings. Capital letters are not used much in everyday writing.
Students learn to write in Avoiuli at Turaga's traditional school at Lavatmanggemu in north-eastern Pentecost, and at affiliated 'custom schools', paying substantial school fees for the privilege. Avoiuli is also used in record-keeping by the Tangbunia indigenous bank.
In the official Latin orthography, the 'NG' [ŋ] and 'NGG' [ᵑɡ] shown here are written ⟨n̄⟩ and ⟨ḡ⟩ respectively, with a macron.
The letter 'G' indicates a velar fricative, [ɣ] or [x], and not the voiced velar plosive [ɡ] of English.
The Avoiuli digraphs 'BW', 'VW' and 'MW' parallel the Latin convention, where they indicate labialized consonants [ʷ]. Note also that 'V' can also be pronounced [f], and 'B' can also be pronounced [p].
There are letters to transliterate the rest of the basic Latin script, as well as additional vowels for other languages of Vanuatu.
The numerals of Avoiuli script. There are also numerals for higher numbers.[citation needed]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Avoiuli (from Raga avoi 'talk about' and uli 'draw' or 'paint') is a writing system used by the Turaga indigenous movement on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu. It was devised by Chief Viraleo Boborenvanua over a 14-year period, based on designs found in traditional sand drawings, and intended as a native alternative to the Latin alphabet. It is used mainly for writing in the area's native Raga language, although it can also be used for writing other languages, and is sometimes used to write Apma, Bislama and even English.
The Turaga nation is an indigenous movement based in northern Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. Its leader is Chief Viraleo Boborenvanua, and it has also been associated with Motarilavoa Hilda Lin̄i. The organisation has its headquarters in the traditional village of Lavatmanggemu on the north-east coast of Pentecost. The Turaga movement promotes the revival of traditional Melanesian customs, modernised in certain respects. In place of the Western economic system, which is seen as a cause of poverty and foreign dependency, the movement promotes the kastom (custom) economy, based on traditional systems of economic exchange and native forms of currency such as pigs and woven mats. The Turaga movement operates its own bank (called Tangbunia after the giant baskets in which valuables were traditionally stored) at which these items can be deposited, and has devised a unit of currency (the livatu, equal to the value of a fully curved boar's tusk) in which their value can be reckoned. Turaga has also announced controversial plans to print its own paper currency. The movement operates a school, the Melanesian Institute of Science, Philosophy, Humanity and Technology (Bwatielen Borebore, Vovoraga, Mwaguana i Gotovigi) at which scholars are offered an alternative to the Western-style education provided by Vanuatu's other schools. The school follows a curriculum of its own creation, with teaching organised according to a native lunar calendar. Scholars write in the native Raga language or in Bislama, using an alphabet named Avoiuli developed by Viraleo and inspired by traditional sand drawings. The Turaga movement has caused controversy, with some dismissing the movement as self-serving, as a cargo cult, or as a step backwards into heathenism. The movement has also been criticised for promoting its own particular interpretation of traditional culture. However, Turaga's leaders argue that the values they promote are common to all traditional Melanesian societies and are not incompatible with Christianity.
Raga (also known as Hano) is the language of northern Pentecost Island in Vanuatu. Like all Vanuatu languages, Raga belongs to the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian languages family. In old sources the language is sometimes referred to by the names of villages in which it is spoken, such as Bwatvenua (Qatvenua), Lamalanga, Vunmarama and Loltong. It is the most conservative language of Pentecost Island, having preserved final vowels while also retaining the five-vowel system inherited from Proto-Oceanic, compared to other languages spoken on the island, which have all developed additional vowels in addition to pervasive vowel deletion. With an estimated 6,500 native speakers (in the year 2000), Raga is the second most widely spoken of Pentecost's five native languages (after Apma), and the seventh largest vernacular in Vanuatu as a whole. There are significant communities of Raga speakers on Maewo island and in Port Vila and Luganville as a result of emigration from Pentecost. Walter Lini, the independence leader of Vanuatu, was a native Raga speaker. The Raga spoken by most people today is heavily mixed with Bislama, Vanuatu's national language. The Turaga indigenous movement, based at Lavatmanggemu in north-eastern Pentecost, have attempted to purge the language of foreign influences by coining or rediscovering native words for introduced concepts such as "torch battery" (vat bon̄bon̄i, literally "night stones") and "hour" (ḡuha, literally "movement"). Members of the Turaga movement write in Raga language using Avoiuli, a unique writing system inspired by local sand drawings. Raga is generally considered an easy language to speak and learn, and is widely spoken as a second language by native speakers of other Vanuatu languages. Modern Raga is relatively homogeneous, with no significant dialectal variation. A distinctive southern dialect of Raga, Ḡasai, is now extinct; its last native speaker died in 1999. Several grammatical sketches, vocabulary lists and short papers on Raga have been published, beginning with the work of R H Codrington and von der Gabelentz in the late 19th century, and a number of religious texts have been translated into the language.
The Austronesian languages ( AW-strə-NEE-zhən) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken by approximately 386 million people (4.4% of the world population). This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay (one variant standardized as Indonesian), Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog (and its standardized form Filipino), Malagasy and Cebuano. According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family. In 1706, the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland first observed similarities between the languages spoken in the South East Asia Archipelago and by peoples on islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the 19th century, researchers (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Herman van der Tuuk) started to apply the comparative method to the Austronesian languages. The first extensive study on the history of the phonology was made by the German linguist Otto Dempwolff. It included a reconstruction of the Proto-Austronesian lexicon. The term Austronesian was coined (as German austronesisch) by Wilhelm Schmidt, deriving it from Latin auster "south" and Ancient Greek νῆσος (nêsos "island"), meaning the "Southern Island languages". Most Austronesian languages are spoken by the people of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania. Only a few languages, such as Peninsular Malay varieties, Jakun, Temuan, Urak Lawoiʼ and the Chamic languages (except Acehnese), are indigenous to mainland Asia, or Malagasy which is the only Austronesian language indigenous to Insular East Africa. There are few Austronesian languages which have populations exceeding a few thousand, but a handful have speaking populations in the millions; Indonesian, the most widely spoken, has around 252 million speakers, making it the tenth most-spoken language in the world. Approximately twenty Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries. By the number of languages they include, Austronesian and Niger–Congo are the two largest language families in the world. They each contain roughly one-fifth of the world's languages. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family in the first half of the second millennium CE, before the spread of Indo-European languages in the colonial period. It ranges from Madagascar to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. According to Robert Blust (1999), Austronesian is divided into several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively in Taiwan. The Formosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside the Taiwan mainland (including its offshore Yami language) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian (sometimes called Extra-Formosan) branch. Most Austronesian languages lack a long history of written attestation. The oldest inscription in the Cham language, the Đông Yên Châu inscription dated to c. 350 AD, is the first attestation of any Austronesian language.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
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