Roro love poem
Oi ore' oremu ore'ore ai
Hana au e'u poem nuavina
I'a kono'a noa a'i me'akauma,
Au eu puana, "arimu na'ari"
→ French poem ←
Roro language
The translation of my love poem into Roro a Papuan language, also called Waima, Paitana, spoken by 15,000 people.
The main name of the language is waima, and it is made up of two other dialects which are paitana and roro. Here, the translation of my poem is exactly in Roro.
Waima is one of ten Austronesian languages in the central province of Papua New Guinea. All these languages would have separated from their mother tongue 3,000 years ago.
This language is part of the languages of the Papuan tip, that is to say the languages of the south-east of Papua, it is close to Kuni at nearly 50%.
The roros live in the Bereina district of the central province, northwest of Port Moresby, in the Kairuku region, on the coast between the villages of Meauri and Hisiu.
They are generally fishermen, hunters and farmers.
We began to collect the oral tradition of the Roros, and to research their language and that of the Waimas and Paitanas, to study the differences.
Some explanations
In Papua New Guinea there are a very large number of languages, many of them are spoken by a very small number of speakers.
The country consists of half of New Guinea island, to which are added the islands of the archipelago Bismarck, Buka and Bougainville, the Admiralty islands and some secondary islands for a total 460,000 km².
All these lands are mountainous with many active volcanoes, and undergo an equatorial climate, very watered, with precipitation exceeding 5m on certain slopes.