Lonwolwol love poem

Love poem translated into Lonwolwol (Western Ambrym, Ambrym) by Harold Temar, one of the last five people to speak this language.

As you can see in the reverse translation, there were no words to translate "mirror" and "poem", also Harold replaced the word "poem" by the word "chant" and "your image in the mirror" by "your reflection in the water".

Lonwolwol which is part of the South Oceanic languages, and more precisely the languages of northern and central Vanuatu, was formerly the Lingua Franca of Ambrym (Ambrim), an island of Vanuatu which count 5 or 6 other languages and dialects.

At the end of the 19th century, with the Presbyterian missionaries, Lonwolwol was studied and used as a common language. At that time, there were European colonizers and the Ambrymes natives on Ambrym.

In 1913 a major volcanic eruption resulted in dispersing the entire Lonwolwol community to other islands. The use of the language then ended up dying out.

Subsequently, Ambrym was inhabited again, but only by the natives, and by 1940 only five villages remained, with a total of around 300 people.

Today Harold Temar and his nephew George Tasso, who are originally from Lonwolwol, are trying to save their language by relying on their knowledge and existing documents, including a dictionary and a grammar.

Currently they are seeking to bring the youngest to learn and sing hymns, which the first missionaries translated into Lonwolwol.

They are also thinking about the best way to launch language courses. Perhaps, after putting their project on paper, they will publish it on the Internet, asking everyone who is interested to support their idea.

The main idea is to encourage the natives of Lonwolwol to take an interest in the revival of their language.

To do this, they are looking to raise funds to buy a laptop that will be useful for their project.

The island of Ambrym was first discovered by Bougainville then 6 years later by Cook. It is a volcanic island with a still active volcano.

Ambrym, which has 6 or 7,000 inhabitants, living very simply in villages, has so far been less influenced than other islands of Vanuatu by external cultures.