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Raga (also known as Hano) is the language of northern Pentecost island in Vanuatu. Raga belongs to the East Vanuatu languages, a branch 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. 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. 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 bongbongi'', literally "night stones") and "hour" (''ngguha'', 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 known as a second language by a number of speakers of other Vanuatu languages. Modern Raga is relatively homogeneous, with no significant dialectal variation. A distinctive southern dialect of Raga, Nggasai, 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. However, no thorough description of Raga has ever been published. ==Phonology== The consonants of Raga are b, d, g (pronounced () like in Scottish "loch"), h, k, l, m, n, ng (like in English "singer"), ngg (prenasalised ''g''), r, s, t, v (commonly pronounced like English ''f''), w, and labiovelar bw, mw and vw. In printed media, ''ng'' and ''ngg'' are generally represented by ''n'' and ''g'' with italics or macrons. Prenasalization of consonants, such that ''b'' becomes ''mb'' and ''d'' becomes ''nd'', occurs when the preceding consonant is a nasal one (''m'', ''n'' or ''ng''). Thus ''mabu'' "rest", for example, is pronounced ''mambu''. Raga has the five basic vowels a, e, i, o and u. Vowels are not generally distinguished for length. Word roots in Raga nearly always end with a vowel. However, word-final vowels are often dropped within phrases, so that, for example, ''tanga'' "basket" and ''maita'' "white" combine to make ''tang maita'' "white basket". Stress occurs on the penultimate syllable of a word. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Raga language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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