Tour de Nauru

Le peloton est regroupé (Tour de Nauru, Tour de Nauru)

Camarades et amitié (Tour de Nauru, Tour de Nauru)

Like any great country, Nauru also has its own Tour cycle race à la the Tour de France, which ran its 108th edition this year. Once the flash of humour I produced, observing the Nauruans' anatopistic use of the French proposition de, had passed, a second topical concern came over my mind: the size of the place. Yes, at roughly 30,500 times the size, France is much more suited to a multi-staged, long-distance cycling event than the 21 square kilometre island in the middle of the Pacific. In any case, the Tour - which might well be running its course as I write this very blog post - is a much smaller affair, consisting in a single lap of the island, which I estimate to be just under 17 kilometres' worth. No doubt, this new (?) race is part of a number of anti-obesity measures the Nauruan government have, logic dictating, introduced, given the poor state of the nation's health, post contact with western capitalism.

One day, I may visit Nauru. That is, if I should later find the leisure to do so, and climate catastrophe has not sufficiently merited that one should not travel to one's antipodes. I should enjoy cycling round the island, as it would match the rough duration of my own escapades into the local countryside, at some 40 minutes. That is a sensible cycle time, I think, unlike the Tour de France's gruelling day-long tortures. 40 minutes, though, is the rough duration of an Olympic road cycling time trial. The distance covered, however, is two and a half Tours de Nauru.

Nauru on 'Pointless'

Alas, narrow Nauru, it has been so long since I last found you; but today you appeared on Pointless with Richard Osman and Alexander Armstrong. One day we will meet: that is, if you are not under two foot of water by the time I get the chance. Luckily, the lofty heights of Buada Lagoon may resist the rising tide of climate change. So I end my Pointless post with a pointless care and a true anxiety.

P.S. My actual point is that Nauru was mentioned on BBC's Pointless today, and you might find it on the iPlayer. In fact, I think it was the winning answer!

Nauru remains Coronavirus free after many months

My second post of all on this site was to make a surface-level comparison between Nauru traditional warrior dress and a hazmat suit. Well it would appear that, taken as a metaphor for Nauru's defence against Coronavirus, it contains some grain of truth, since Nauru remains Coronavirus free exactly three months after lockdown was established in my native UK.

The armour of Nauru is of course not their traditional warrior dress, which I can safely assume is no longer worn day-to-day, but the vast buffering of the Pacific Ocean, and the isolation that necessarily implicates. Nauru Airlines has cancelled all but their fortnightly service to Brisbane, meaning, I assume, that the mandatory two-week quarantine can be served and completed by one batch of passengers before the arrival of the next service on the day of completion.

Quarantainees have been staying at the Budapest Hotel on the north of the island, in the Anabar region of the nation. Nauru president Lionel Aingimea has been giving regular updates to Nauruans, though given the frequent code-switching between English and the native language I am unable to offer any summary of his most recent update.

Nauru remains one of ten sovereign nations in Oceania whose Coronavirus tally remains at zero. Given the re-opening of much of Western Europe and tentative signs that this pandemic might be coming to an end at least here, perhaps Nauru will survive the whole pandemic without a single case.

Countries of the World in Nauruan

The following post contains a list of the countries of the world in the Nauruan language, according to Wikipedia. There are 138 country pages out of 196 possible. As well as copying the list from the Wikipedia category page, I have provided the English equivalents. Given that many are simply 'Nauricised' spellings and pronunciations of the English names, the list makes an interesting introduction into Nauruan phonetics, phonology and orthography. As I went through translating, I tried guessing the English translation and was successful for the vast majority of cases. However, the English names can be quite obscured in the Nauruan transliteration and in some cases I needed to look these up to check. The countries marked with a single asterisk in the English I had to look up by looking at the English Wikipedia page. Any marked with a double asterisk were guessed incorrectly then corrected on verification. The incorrect guess I've put in curved brackets.

There are a number of patterns which you'll be able to pick up on as you read. If you'd like to guess them yourself, I suggest going onto the Nauruan Wikipedia page 'Category:Eb' (this being the Nauruan word for 'country') as this does not immediately provide the English equivalents. It may be worth looking at the English for just the countries beginning letter 'A' to gain an idea of what kinds of patterns to expect. On these I will probably write a post at some point in the future explaining - if I can - the rules of transliteration.

Some of these seem inconsistent (or maybe that's just me unable to accept my mistakes!), so I am wondering whether the Nauruan translations are the result of one (or a few) neologising editor(s). Certainly native Nauruans wouldn't need to refer to most of these countries in their day-to-day vocabulary, which increases the likelihood that these were improvised!

That's a matter for another post. For now though, here's the list:

Apeganitan - Afghanistan

Arbainiya - Albania

Andorra - Andorra

Antigua me Barbuda - Antigua and Barbuda

Aibori Kot - Ivory Coast

Aiti - Haiti

Aiterand - Iceland*

Angora - Angola

Ardjiriya - Algeria

Ardjentina - Argentina

Arminiya - Armenia

Aderbaidjan - Azerbaijan

Bahrain - Bahrain

Benin - Benin

Botenija me Erdjegobina - Bosnia and Herzegovina

Brunei - Brunei

Borgerija - Bulgaria

Burundi - Burundi

Bidji - Fiji

Banuatu - Vanuatu 

Batikan - Vatican City

Butan - Bhutan

Bitinam - Vietnam

Boribija - Bolivia

Bañradej - Bangladesh

Burkina Pato - Burkina Faso

Bahamat - Bahamas

Barbadot - Barbados

Berarut - Beirut

Berdjijum - Belgium

Botwana - Botswana

Beridj - Belize*

Bradjir - Brazil*

Denemark - Denmark

Djermani - Germany

Djapan - Japan

Djamaika - Jamaica

Djiordjiya - Georgia

Djibuti - Djibouti

Dominika - Dominica

Ripubrikin Dominika - Dominican Republic

Djordan - Jordan

Ekwador - Ecuador

Eritrea - Eritrea

Eben Merika - USA

Emireitit Arabiya - UAE

Ersarbador - El Salvador

Etoniya - Estonia

Eben Oning - FS Micronesia*

Grit - Greece

Grenada - Grenada

Guyana - Guyana

Ginit Ekwador - Equatorial Guinea

Gana - Ghana

Gambiya - Gambia

Guatemara - Guatemala

Gini - Guinea

Gini-Bitau - Guinea Bissau

Idjipt - Egypt

Indjiya - India

Indonitsiya - Indonesia

Iran - Iran

Irak - Iraq

Itari - Italy

Ingerand - United Kingdom

Iteraer - Israel

Itiyopiya - Ethiopia

Kiuba - Cuba

Kadaketan - Kazakhstan

Kiribat - Kiribati

Kuwait - Kuwait

Kirgitan - Kyrgyzstan

Kamerun - Cameroon

Kanada - Canada

Korombiya - Colombia

Komorot - Comoros

Kosta Rika - Costa Rica

Kroaitsiya - Croatia

Keniya - Kenya

Matedoniya - Macedonia

Maraidja - Malaysia*

Marta - Malta

Meketiko - Mexico

Monako - Monaco

Mongoriya - Mongolia

Montenegro - Montenegro

Mardib - Maldives*

Miyanmar - Myanmar

Naoero - Nauru

Niterand - The Netherlands*

Niu Djiran - New Zealand

Norwei - Norway

Nepar - Nepal

Otereiriya - Australia

Oteriya - Austria

Oman - Oman

Ondurat - Honduras

Pinrand - Finland

Prant - France

Peru - Peru

Eben Piripin - Phillipines 

Poran - Poland

Portsiugar - Portugal

Pain - Spain

Ripubrikin Aprika Yugaga - Central African Republic*

Ripubrikit Engame Kongo - DR Congo

Ripubrikit Airerand - Ireland

Ratebiya - Latvia*

Resoto - Lesotho

Ruketemburg - Luxembourg

Ratsiya - Russia

Ripubrikit Engame Korea - DPR Korea

Ripubrikin Korea - South Korea

Ripubrikin Kongo - Congo

Rituainiya - Lithuania

Ripubrikin Tsiek - Czechia

Riketentein - Lichtenstein

Raot - Laos

Ribanon - Lebanon

Ripubrikin Mordowa - Moldova

South Sudan - South Sudan

Tsiad - Chad

Tsiene - China

Tanmarino - San Marino

Terbiya - Serbia

Tsingapoar - Singapore

Tadjikitan - Tajikistan

Terki - Turkey

Tubaru - Tuvalu

Tsirobeniya - Slovenia*

Tomariya - Somalia

Tsire - Chile** (Syria)

Taiprus - Cyprus

Ungari - Hungary 

Ukraine - Ukraine

Widen - Sweden

Witsierand - Switzerland

Yemen - Yemen

On Nauruan literature

The technology of writing was not - to my current knowledge - in existence when Europeans visited Nauru for the first time. It is therefore an import of Nauru's German colonisers. No doubt there remain written records and official documents from the administration - but this is not the kind of Nauruan literature I am looking for, if it exists.

This raises the question of which texts can be considered literature and which of these texts of literature can be considered 'Nauruan literature'. Does the adjective Nauruan here refer to the language or the nationality? If the former, it surely would not count as Nauruan literature if I were to,  if I were able to, write a few lines in Nauruan and call it poetry. If the latter, would a Nauruan emigrant living in France writing in French produce Nauruan literature or French literature?

A narrow, definition of the term Nauruan literature would be the following: written language of a deliberately creative or narrative style composed in the Nauruan language by a native Nauruan. If we accept that as our definition, the size of the Nauruan literary corpus - to my current knowledge - is zero. (That is discounting parliamentary proceedings^[1] and Nauruan Wikipedia^[2] - which are the only online sources of Nauruan written by Nauruans I know of - because these are not 'of a deliberately creative or narrative style'.)

Nonetheless, if we expand our definition slightly a few texts become part of the Nauruan corpus. For example, the Bible was translated into Nauruan by missionary Philip Delaporte.^[3] He was not a Nauruan native but nonetheless lived on the island for many years undergoing his evangelical work. This should be considered Nauruan literature in the way that Samuel Beckett's plays written in French are considered French literature despite his being Irish by birth. If we include this it would seem here that the primary sense of Nauruan in Nauruan literature is to do with the language.

But what of works of literary merit written in English by Nauruans? That would describe the pages in the Wikipedia category for Nauruan literature, which has only one page on the poem A Beautiful Prayer^[4] by the English-language poet Joanne Gobure.^[5] According to the article on Gobure, the poem gained popularity on Christian web fora,^[6] accounting for its popularity outside Nauru. Other poems by Gobure are also alluded to in the article, but I cannot find any online apart from A Beautiful Prayer. The article admits that these are "little known"^[6] outside of the island.

Taking pre-Conquest English (i.e. referring the rough geographical area now known as 'England') literature as an example of how to deal with a bilingual situation, works are categorised into Old English or Anglo-Saxon Literature (i.e. written in the Old English language) and Anglo-Latin (i.e. written in Latin on the island of Britain, or, for our purposes, England). In a similar vein, Nauruan literature can be divided into the two sub-categories of Nauruan literature proper (i.e. written in Nauruan) and Nauruan English literature (i.e. written in English on/in Nauru or written in English by a Nauruan).

I infer that some of Gobure's works are in Nauruan, even though she writes"overwhelmingly"^[6] in English. Not only at the authorial level, but also at the linguistic level, there can be significant overlap between literature in the native language and literature in English - for example, a text written in a creole, or a text which slips between two different languages. While not literary in nature, President Lionel Aingimea's video interviews^[7] are good examples of this slipping between two languages.

There remain a number of questions as to what constitutes 'Nauruan' literature. However, for the time being I will settle with the somewhat unsatisfactory bipartite definition of Nauruan literature as both, on the one hand, literature written in Nauruan and, on the other hand, original literature written in English by a Nauruan. This would thereby include any text in the fuzzy area between the two sub-categories, or any bilingual texts, as definitively 'Nauruan' literature. In the ambiguity of 'a Nauruan' it also invites the possibility of any English text written by someone like Delaporte being included in the corpus - exactly what the rules are, however, is a matter of debate too complex to claim to resolve in one blog post or alone.

Nonetheless, there are a number of works that I think I can say are definitely Nauruan literature without seeming arbitrary - at the very least these are texts I would consider Nauruan literature. These are of course A Beautiful Prayer and the Nauruan translation of the Bible. Moreover, two books of Nauruan stories have been published by the University of the South Pacific. These are Legends, Traditions and Tales of Nauru (ISBN: 9789820203945) and Stories from Nauru (ISBN: 9789820201125).^[8] The former is essentially an English transcription-translation of existing Nauruan oral literature and folklore. The latter contains - as I can ascertain from a Google Books preview^[9] - stories in English of Nauru locals about their contemporary life on the island. I will be looking to acquire copies of the books and review them.

Acquiring copies of Nauruan literary works is difficult as there are few copies of the above editions in UK libraries and these are unavailable on Amazon. There is no official website for and no published copy of Gobure's poems, so it may involve contacting Nauruan residents to make any of her other poems available to the wider world. Nonetheless, this post sketches an outline of Nauruan literature and is hopefully useful to anyone willing to find out more.

~

Sources:

[1] see 'Hansard - a record of what is said in Parliament', The Government of the Republic of Nauru
[2] see 'Bwiema Peij', Wikipedia - Entsikropidiya emenengame
[3] 'Philip Delaporte', Wikipedia
[4] 'Category:Nauruan literature', Wikipedia
[5] 'A Beautiful Prayer', Wikipedia
[6] 'Joanne Gobure', Wikipedia
[7] 'His Excellency President Lionel Rouwen Aingimea M.P has continued to give Nauruans update on the Coronavirus situation in Nauru in an exclusive interview', Nauru Media News, Facebook
[8] 'IPS Publications' on 'Books for Sale', The University of the South Pacific
[9] 'Stories from Nauru', Google Books

'Judgegate'

Baron Waqa, President of Nauru from 2013 to 2019, lost his seat of Boe in the most recent parliamentary elections. These were held in August of last year.^[1]

But this was not the first challenge to Waqa's presidency. In 2014 a motion of no-confidence in the then President was table in the Nauru parliament^[2] over a scandal I am going to coin - for ease of reference - as judgegate. In summary, three Australian nationals were forced to leave the country in a chain-reaction sparked by the expulsion of the first. Two of these held important legal positions in Nauru, hence the appellation judgegate.

The first Australian to be deported was Rod Henshaw, who, according to The Guardian, "was living and running a business in Nauru"^[3] at the time of his expulsion. The Nauruan Parliament had amended its Immigration Act the night before allowing the minister for Justice, David Adeang, powers to sign deportation orders.^[4] Mr. Henshaw had been a former media adviser to the Nauruan government between 2006 and 2012^[5] and was declared a "'prohibited immigrant" by the Justice minister.^[4]

"I guess the reason I've been shunted is because of the stage when David Adeang was in opposition, I probably wrote a few press releases he didn't particularly like"^[5] is what Henshaw speculated about the reasons for the deportation order. He appealed to the Nauru president - Baron Waqa - on the day of his deportation, but the appeal was refused.^[5]

The second to be deported was Peter Law, an (aptly-named) Australian magistrate. When Henshaw appealed to the courts over his deportation, Law placed an injunction on the order. He too was then the subject of a deportation order.^[6]

At this point, a third Australian steps in. Nauru's Chief Justice Geoffrey Eames placed an injunction on Law's deportation at which point he was also de facto deported as his visa was cancelled while in Australia rendering him unable to reenter the country.^[3]

A motion of no-confidence against Baron Waqa was subsequently tabled in the Nauru parliament over the President's handling of judgegate, but the motion did not gain enough votes to oust him.^[1]

Nauruan politics is, unsurprisingly, covered little in international press. What is known about the country in the UK is mostly obtained through newspaper reports. In the UK, The Guardian seems to be the main reporter on Nauru. It will not help coverage of Nauruan politics, however, that the visa fee for media has gone up from 200 AUD to 8000 AUD. The change in policy was made a few weeks before the deportation orders.^[7]

I don't yet know a lot about Nauru, but one thing I have heard repeatedly is that Nauru is corrupt. This could be in reference to its politics, or a vague understanding that Nauru holds refugees for Australia in poor conditions, or a vague understanding that the phosphate mining industry both created and destroyed Nauru's economy. We can also talk about corruption of the landscape in phosphate mining and corruption of public health in the obesity crisis, but to be specific about these I will write further posts. Nonetheless, for the meantime I hope that this post clarifies the overview of the deportation situations. Not only does the term judgegate classify them as one event in recent Nauruan political history, avoiding thus confusion with other similar events, the collation of different media sources which each only give a partial retelling of the story allows us to map out events chronologically in four parts according the three expulsions of the three Australians from the island and the subsequent no-confidence motion in Waqa.

In turn, writing articles like this helps us build up a clearer picture of Nauru - as sovereign state, island and society.

~

Sources:

[1] 'Nauru election: president Baron Waqa loses his seat', The Guardian, 25 August 2019
[2] Batsiua, Mathew, 'No confidence motion in Nauru fails', RNZ, 28 January 2014
[3] ''I don't take orders from the chief justice': How Nauru ousted its judicial leaders', The Guardian, 25 May 2017
[4] 'Nauru deports former media adviser Rod Henshaw', ABC News, 29 January 2014
[5] 'Former TV and radio host Rod Henshaw deported from Nauru', Brisbane Times, 29 January 2014
[6] 'Nauru deports its only magistrate and bars chief justice from entering country', The Guardian, 19 January 2014
[7] 'Nauru to increase visa cost for journalists from $200 to $8,000', The Guardian, 8 January 2014

On the Nauruan language

NAURUAN - i.e. referring to a native to the island of Nauru, or the language of the island - is a palindrome ^[1]:

N A U R U A N

Now backwards:

N A U R U A N

Wauru!

~

How does one even learn Nauruan?^[1] I wonder myself.

The blog A World With Little Worlds^[2] charts the current learnability of Nauruan. The outlook is not great. Basically, there was one grammar book written on Nauruan in 1907 back when Nauru was a German colony. Naturally, it's written in German. Moreover, Nauruan's orthography was subject to an attempted reform in 1938.^[3] Wikipedia is ambiguous about its success, but our blog author notes that the Nauruan Wikipedia's spelling system is quite different. Presumably this is due to the reform.

A quick search on my University's online library returns a thesis, published this year, which (having read the abstract - I am not a Linguistics student!) confirms the view to classifying Nauruan in the Micronesian language families.^[4] The thesis compares Nauruan words to other Micronesian languages' and concludes that Nauruan is descended from Proto-Micronesian but has undergone 'a significant degree of internal sound change'^[4]:v. At the date of this blog entry, the Wikipedia article for the Micronesian languages^[5] shows the pre-valent scholarly view that Nauruan is a 'non-nuclear' Micronesian language. That is, it forms its own language group within the Micronesian family. Hughes argues the nuclear/non-nuclear distinction 'appears to be unneccessary'^[4]:v and notes that Nauruan morphological paradigms 'have parallels' across the family.^[4]:v

A Nauruan-English Thesaurus Dictionary was also published in 2008,^[6] which is not mentioned by Gimbel in his blog post. The Amazon (the online shop) description notes that it is primarily for use by native speakers of Nauruan learning English - or needing a thesaurus to understand English polysemous words (with multiple meanings). It is clear to state that it is NOT intended for learners.

Unfortunately, even if I were to learn German to learn Nauruan, I can't find a copy of the 1907 grammar Die Sprache von Nauru on my University library page.

It seems, thus, that the best way to learn Nauruan would be to go there. Could one video-chat? Theoretically, yes, but it must be hard; it is in time-zone GMT+12, which literally couldn't be much greater. As we're in BST at the moment, the time difference is 11 hours (as you will be able to tell by the live clock on the right-hand side), but it is a small consolation.

The best way, it seems, is to go there. For the meantime, the trawl for resources continues.

~

Sources:

[1] comment(s) on 'WIKITONGUES: Siro speaking Nauruan', YouTube
[2] Gimbel, Jared, 'The State of Being Able to Learn the Nauruan Language in 2019', A World With Little Worlds
[3] 'Nauruan language', Wikipedia
[4] Hughes, Kevin, The Synchronic and Diachronic Phonology of Nauruan: Towards a Definitive Classification of an Understudied Micronesian Language (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing: Ann Arbor, 2020. 27738348)
[5] 'Micronesian languages', Wikipedia
[6] 'Webster's Nauruan - English Thesaurus Dictionary', amazon.com