Sowa language
Sowa is the indigenous language of south-central Pentecost Island in Vanuatu. The language has now been displaced by a neighbouring language, Abma, and until recently it was unclear to linguists whether there was anybody left who still spoke Sowa.
While working as a volunteer teacher at Ranwadi College (in the area in which Sowa was once spoken), I talked to various local people in an attempt to discover more about their ancestors' language. Here is what I found out...
The bad news is that there is nobody left who speaks Sowa as their mother tongue, and only a handful of old people still claim to speak it fluently. As a living language, Sowa is extinct.
However, quite a number of people still have some knowledge of Sowa, and a few villagers, seeing their old language in danger of being forgotten, are making determined and touching efforts to write it down and to pass it on to their children. Local people are keenly aware that a part of their ancestors' culture at risk of disappearing forever, and although some see it as a lost cause, others seem to hold out a genuine hope that Sowa might someday be resurrected.
According to local people, the ancestor of Sowa language spread up from south Pentecost; the language is thus closely related to Ske (the language of Baravet village) - with which it is mutually intelligible - and to a lesser extent to Sa (South Pentecost language). Abma (Apma) language spread downwards from central Pentecost, and the two met at Melsisi River, which formed the original boundary between Abma-speaking and Sowa-speaking areas. (Melsisi means "spoil" in Sowa, and got its name because the people living at the mouth of the river were in the habit of attacking their mountain-dwelling neighbours when they came down to the sea.) Sowa's range once extended eastwards to the far coast, although this area of eastern Pentecost has since been entirely depopulated.
On the west coast, Sowa extended southwards approximately to the village of Ranmawot, although there is disagreement about exactly where its southern boundary with Ske language lay. Some claim that Ranmawot (which is Abma-speaking today) and the neighbouring village of Levisendam (which is supposedly Ske-speaking although Abma is increasingly used there) were originally Sowa-speaking; others claim that the original language of these two villages was Ske. It may be that the people in these two villages once spoke a mixture of Sowa and Ske.
Most of the place names in the area between Melsisi and Levisendam are Sowa in origin, although they have been altered in many cases to fit the sounds of Abma. For example, the 'z' sound - a feature of Sowa (and Ske) but not of Abma - has generally been replaced with 's'. Several place names begin with ran, the Sowa word for "on" (Ranwadi, for example, means "on a mound of stones by the shore").
Sowa was a victim of the disease epidemics that swept Vanuatu following the arrival of Europeans. Men from Sowa-speaking villages were forced to marry Abma-speaking women from Central Pentecost because their own area had become so depopulated.
"While the men were in their gardens or at the nakamal," lamented one villager, "the women were teaching Abma to the children". Abma thus displaced Sowa as the villagers' mother tongue. The change of language was remarkably complete, with no village continuing to use Sowa and virtually no absorption of Sowa words (other than place names) into the local dialect of Abma.
In its original form Sowa was sharply distinct from Abma, and speakers of the two languages could not understand one another. However, it is acknowledged that the Sowa spoken by some people today has been corrupted by Abma. There might also be a risk of Sowa in southern areas being corrupted by Ske (although the villagers deny that this has happened yet), since the people who remember how to speak Sowa nowadays tend to be those who are also familiar with Ske. Sowa is easy for Ske speakers to learn because the two languages are so similar.
The person at the forefront of efforts to record and revive Sowa language is Isaiah Tabi Vwaka from Waterfall Village. (This village's traditional name, Vanu, is often said to mean "waterfall" in Sowa, but according to Principal Silas Buli of Ranwadi, the word in fact describes the echoing sound made in caves behind a waterfall.) Isaiah encourages men who still know a little Sowa (of whom there seem to be quite a few at Waterfall) to speak it together in the nakamal, and was responsible for the notice written in Sowa at the door of the nakamal that first sparked my interest in the language. He is also hoping that Sowa will soon be taught to children in the local primary school.
Isaiah's father was a native Sowa speaker who never learned Abma and died when Isaiah was in kindergarten; his mother is a Ske speaker who understands Sowa. Isaiah claims that he can still remember how his father spoke Sowa, and that his pronunciation of the language is thus relatively authentic. He first began writing notes on Sowa back in 1998 when he was at high school, where he was encouraged by one of his teachers. "One day," the teacher told him, "white people will come and want to see your book". My visit was thus something of a vindication of his efforts!
With the help of a recently-deceased local elder, Isaiah has now compiled a book (Tamzon Nan Dutmekan Lon Dolod Ne Sowa) containing about 900 words and phrases in Sowa, with Abma translations. The listings are not alphabetical nor divided into clear sections, and for a few words the Sowa translation is missing (nobody could remember it), but the book is intended to cover all the basics of the language. The book begins with one-word listings of numbers, body parts and genealogical terms, and moves on to other nouns and then to short phrases. It was typed up on a friend's computer, although only five copies were printed because the villagers could not afford more. It was launched in September 2006 at a small ceremony in Waterfall nakamal, and Isaiah hopes to put together further books on Sowa in future.
Isaia Tabi Vahka at Waterfall Village with his book of Sowa language
"Our mother tongue [is] our identity. Therefore, this booklet encourages our young generations to...unite and help develop the resurrection of our language," the book's introduction (written in Bislama with English and French translations) concludes.
Some locals see Isaiah's efforts as a waste of time, he told me, and he seemed pleased and surprised to discover that there are people outside Pentecost who care about the preservation of its languages. Isaiah had yet to show his book even to the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, partly because he could not afford to produce an extra copy.
With Isaiah's permission, I borrowed his book, took it to Ranwadi and printed several more copies. I gave six to him, which he intends to give to other communities within the Sowa area that have yet to receive his book. He also agreed that I could send a copy to a linguist I know, and take one to the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in Port Vila.
I also made recordings of Isaiah reciting a few of the Sowa words and phrases from his book.
In the village of Lesubelakan (commonly referred to as Lesubwe), above Melsisi, a unique dialect of Sowa is spoken that is different from the form of Sowa spoken further south. The name Lesubelakan actually means "altered speech", or something similar, in Sowa. Some people claim that the Lesubelakan variety of Sowa is closer to Abma whilst the southern variety is closer to Ske, although Isaiah insists that both should be regarded as unique dialects in their own right and not merely as Abma-ised and Ske-ised versions of Sowa.
Lesubelakan is described by many islanders as a place where people still speak Sowa, although in fact most of the old people of the village are no longer fluent in the language, and some of the young people do not speak it at all. A white-haired resident named Noel is reckoned to speak the language well, but I have yet to meet him. However, I did chat to Adam, one local chief, and make some recordings of him speaking Sowa (and Ske, of which he knew a bit), along with the same phrases in Abma for comparison. Unfortunately, Adam clearly hadn't spoken Sowa for a long time and appears to have forgotten much of it. He learned it from his father, a Sowa speaker, and prior to his father's death Adam wrote down some phrases in Sowa (with Abma translations) in a notebook in an attempt to ensure that the language was not lost. Sadly, he did not have the notebook handy at the time of my visit. Adam has tried to encourage his children to show an interest in learning Sowa, with only limited success.
In Lesubelakan, Adam believes that it was during the 1960s that Abma replaced Sowa as the lingua franca.
The last native speaker of Sowa is reckoned to have been an old man living at Vanvat village, who died in 2003.
Isaiah tells me that in Port Vila there is a Sowa Association, consisting of people from south-central Pentecost who help one another out in times of difficulty. The association's members do not actually speak Sowa, but they recognise their common heritage - they are wantoks bereft of their common language!
An example of Sowa language - the numbers from 1 to 10
| English | Sowa | Abma |
|---|---|---|
| one | tual | bwaleh |
| two | iru | karu |
| three | izol | katsil |
| four | ivet | kavet |
| five | ilim | kalim |
| six | lual | labwaleh |
| seven | liuru | laviru |
| eight | liptul | laptsil |
| nine | lakpat | lapet |
| ten | seprenok | sangwul |
Click here to hear Isaiah Tabi Vahka reciting the numbers 1 to 10 in Sowa