Problem:IOL/2012/i5/en

IOL 2012 Problem #5 Rotuman
Here are some words and word combinations in Rotuman as well as their English translations:

(a) Here are the Rotuman names of seven body parts as well as their English translations in arbitrary order. Determine the correct correspondences:

‘u‘u, isu, kia, leva, mafa, susu, huga

breast, eye, arm/hand, hair, heart, neck, nose

(b) Translate into English: tiro, poga (noun), huag lala, hạf puhrạki, maf pogi = maf pala.

(c) Translate into Rotuman: round; to cut copra; curly hair; sticky; to flash; rubbish.

(d) Using the material given above you cannot translate ‘word’ and ‘to exhaust’ into Rotuman with certainty. What would the theoretically possible translations of these words into Rotuman be?

⚠ Rotuman belongs to the Austronesian family. It is spoken by approx. 9000 people in Fiji. ‘ is a consonant (the so-called glottal stop); ạ is an open o; ä ≈ a in crack; ö = French eu or German ö; ü = French u or German ü. The mark ˉ denotes vowel length. Copra is the dried kernel of a coconut.

—Boris Iomdin, Alexander Piperski