Editing Tuvaluan language (section)

==Academic study and major publications==
Tuvaluan is one of the least documented languages of Polynesia.{{sfn|Besnier|2000}} There has been limited work done on Tuvaluan from an English-speaking perspective. The first major work on Tuvaluan syntax was done by [[Donald Gilbert Kennedy]], who published a ''Handbook on the language of the Tuvalu (Ellice) Islands'' in 1945. Niko Besnier has published the greatest amount of academic material on Tuvaluan – both descriptive and lexical. Besnier's description of Tuvaluan uses a phonemic orthography which differs from the ones most commonly used by Tuvaluans - which sometimes do not distinguish geminate consonants. Jackson's ''An Introduction to Tuvaluan'' is a  useful guide to the language from a first contact point of view.  The orthography used by most Tuvaluans is based on Samoan, and, according to Besnier, isn't well-equipped to deal with important difference in vowel and consonant length which often perform special functions in the Tuvaluan language. Throughout this profile, Besnier's orthography is used as it best represents the linguistic characteristics under discussion.