Kiribati

Kiribati (KEER-ə-bahss or /ˌkɪrɪˈbɑːti/; KEER-ə-BAH-tee), officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean. The nation comprises 33 atolls and reef islands and one raised coral island, Banaba. They have a total land area of 800 square kilometers (310 sq mi) and are dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometers (1,351,000 square miles). Their spread straddles the equator and the International Date Line, although the Date Line is indented to bring the Line Islands in the same day as the Kiribati Islands. The permanent population is just over 100,000 (2011), half of whom live on Tarawa Atoll.Kiribati became independent from the United Kingdom in 1979. The capital and now most populated area, South Tarawa, consists of a number of islets, connected by a series of causeways These comprise about half the area of Tarawa Atoll.
Kiribati is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999.Kiribati is located on the equator south-west of the Hawaiian Islands.

 

 Kiribati currency is the Australian Dollar (AUD).

 

 

Kiribati Language (taetae ni Kiribati)

Kiribati is a Micronesian language spoken in Kiribati, Fiji, Nauru, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu by about 70,000 people. The Republic of Kiribati was formerly called the Gilbert Islands and their languge was called Gilbertese. The islands were named after Captain Thomas Gilbert, who "discovered" the main island of the group in 1788. Kiribati [kiribas] is the local version of Gilbert. The original name of the islands was Tungaru.
The Kiribati language first appeared in writing in the mid 19th century. Rev. Hiram Bingham, Jr. of the Protestant mission based in Hawaii arrived in the Gilberts in 1857, devised a way of writing Kiribati using the Latin alphabet and used it to produce a translation of the Bible. Other missionaries devised different spelling systems.
In the mid-1970s the Kiribati Language Board was established to standardise the orthography and grammar of the Kiribati language, to compose and update a dictionary and to work towards development of a Kiribati literature.

Kiribati alphabet and pronunciation

A a	B b	E e	I i	K k	M m	N n	Ng ng	O o	R r	T t	U u	W w
ah	bee	eh	ee	kee	mm	nn	ngg	oh	ree	see	oo	wee
[ a ]	[ b ]	[ e ]	[ i ]	[ k ]	[ m ]	[ n ]	[ ŋ ]	[ o ]	[ r ]	[ s ]	[ u ]	[ w ]

Sample text in Kiribati

I a butiiko ma kawiiremweko riki n taetae ao tai kaboonganai taeka aika a kaangaanga b'a I aonga ni waetata n rabakau.
Translation
Please speak slowly, and don't use difficult words, so that I can learn more quickly.