Information from: “Documentation of Lakurumau: Making the case for one more language in Papua New Guinea” (215-237) . Lidia Federica Mazzitelli (2020)
Endangered
80 percent certain, based on the evidence available
~800
"I estimate roughly ca. 800 speakers."
DOMAINS OF USE
TRANSMISSION
MORE ON VITALITY
"At present, Lakurumau is still vital and widely used by the older generations (age ca. 40+) in their daily life, but is not always passed on to children. In a few households, Lakurumau is still the primary language, spoken on a daily basis by elderly family members as well as by children. In most families, however, and especially in mixed households, the intergenerational language is Tok Pisin, the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea. In general, children and teenagers still have a fairly good passive knowledge of Lakurumau but many of them have limited active competence and some children have almost no active competence at all."
OTHER LANGUAGES USED BY THE COMMUNITY
Tok Pisin
LANGUAGE CONTEXT COMMENTS
"Lakurumau has so far been a mostly oral language. It has been taught in the village elementary school for the past few years. Some years ago, Mrs. Dinah Gurumang, a local teacher and Lakurumau language activist, wrote a booklet with some Lakurumau texts and wordlists to be used in school lessons, using the orthography established by the Summer Institute of Linguistics translators for Kara. Unfortunately, all copies of this booklet have seemingly been lost, and I have not been able to recover any of them. In order to foster literacy in Lakurumau, Mrs. Gurumang and I have written three other booklets (see §2.3), which can be used in the village elementary school as well as in the pre-school course Early Childhood run by Mrs. Gurumang and other community members."
Scripts (Writing system)
Roman
PLACES
Papua New Guinea;
LOCATION DESCRIPTION
"Lakurumau is spoken in the eponymous village of Lakurumau, on the East Coast of New Ireland."