A Nanumea Lexicon (1980)
by Peter Ranby
Peter Ranby, a New Zealand linguist who worked for years at the University of Auckland, studied linguistics under Professor Bruce Biggs. He worked with speakers of the Nanumea dialect in Auckland and in Malua (Samoa). Practical constraints meant he was was unable to visit Nanumea itself. Peter’s lexicon is a useful source for Nanumean words - nicely supplementing other works.
The biographical overview below was written by Peter’s colleague Richard Benton and published in 2012 in the Journal of the Polynesian Society:
“Peter Ranby (1926-2012) was a larger-than-life figure who served as Secretary of the Polynesian Society for 18 years, and a further two years as a Council member. Peter was a foundation student at Ardmore Teachers College, and went on to a career as an outstanding teacher at schools in the Waikato and Auckland. In the 1950s he worked through his BA part-time, and went on to complete a Masters degree in Anthropology in the 1960s. He did fieldwork on the Nanumea dialect of the Tüvalu language, working with seamen and other people from Nanumea who were resident in Auckland and Mälua, Western Samoa. His description of Nanumea syntax constituted his MA thesis (1973), and his lexicographical work was incorporated in his Nanumea Lexicon (1980) in which he provided an etymology for every new word, thus also providing material for many new reconstructions. “