Native toVanuatu
RegionMota island
Native speakers
750 (2012)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3mtt

Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu. The language (named after the island) is one of the most conservative Torres–Banks languages, and the only one to keep its inherited five-vowel system intact while also preserving most final vowels.[2]


During the period 1840-1940, Mota was used as a missionary lingua franca throughout areas of Oceania included in the Melanesian Mission, an Anglican missionary agency.[3] Mota was used on Norfolk Island, in religious education; on other islands with different vernacular languages, it served as the language of liturgical prayers, hymns, and some other religious purposes. Elizabeth Fairburn Colenso translated religious material into the language.[3]

Robert Henry Codrington compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with George Sarawia and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language.


Phoneme inventory

Mota phonemically contrasts 14 consonants and 5 vowels, /i e a o u/.[4][5] These 19 phonemes form the smallest phonemic inventory among the Torres-Banks languages.

Mota consonants
Labiovelar Bilabial Alveolar Dorsal
Nasal ŋ͡mʷ ⟨m̄⟩ m ⟨m⟩ n ⟨n⟩ ŋ ⟨n̄⟩
Stop k͡pʷ ⟨q⟩ p ⟨p⟩ t ⟨t⟩ k ⟨k⟩
Fricative β ⟨v⟩[a] s ⟨s⟩ ɣ ⟨g⟩
Rhotic r ⟨r⟩
Approximant w ⟨w⟩ l ⟨l⟩
  1. ^ There is free variation between [β] and [f].
Mota vowels
Front Back
Close i u
Close-mid e o
Open a


Proto-Torres–Banks, the ancestor of all Torres–Banks languages including Mota, is reconstructed as a language with open syllables of type {CV}, and no closed syllable {CVC}. That phonotactic profile has been preserved in many words of modern Mota (e.g. salagoro [salaɣoro] “secret enclosure for initiation rituals”, ran̄oran̄o [raŋoraŋo]Acalypha hispida”), unlike surrounding languages which massively created closed syllables. That said, modern Mota also reflects the regular loss of unstressed high vowels *i and *u ‒ a process already incipient in the earliest attestations of the language (circa 1860) and completed in modern Mota. As a result, many modern Mota words now feature final consonants and/or consonant clusters: e.g. pal [pal] (< palu) "to steal"; snaga [snaɣa] (< sinaga) "vegetable food"; ptepte [ptepte] (< putepute) "to sit".[6]


  1. ^ François (2012): 88).
  2. ^ Linguistic map of north Vanuatu, showing range of Mota.
  3. ^ a b Transcribed by the Right Reverend Dr. Terry Brown (2007). "Elizabeth Colenso: Her work for the Melanesian Mission; by her eldest granddaughter Francis Edith Swabey 1956". Retrieved 5 December 2015.
  4. ^ François (2005:445)
  5. ^ François (2021).
  6. ^ François (2005:469, 493).