Tiri

Tiri, also recorded as Tinrin, Ciri or Mea, is a Kanak language of the Austronesian family spoken in the west-central part of Grande Terre, the main island of New Caledonia.

It belongs with the extinct Zire tongue to the Zire-Tiri branch of the southern New Caledonian languages and makes extensive use of possessive classifiers. The Kanak languages descend from Lapita voyagers, whose first coastal settlements in New Caledonia appeared around 1100 BC.

James Cook sighted Grande Terre in September 1774 and named it New Caledonia; the Comte de Lapérouse reconnoitred the west coast in 1788, and whalers mapped the Loyalty Islands from 1793. For decades afterwards contacts with the archipelago remained sporadic, and Tiri remained an unwritten language of oral custom throughout this period.