Marshallese language

Marshallese Kajin M̧ajeļ or Kajin Majõl
Spoken in:	Marshall Islands, Nauru
Total speakers:	43,900 (1979)
Language family:	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Central-Eastern Micronesian Micronesian Proper Marshallese
Official status
Official language in:	Marshall Islands (with English)
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	`mh`
ISO 639-2:	`mah`
ISO 639-3:	`mah`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI is a Micronesian nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru, is an Island nation in the Micronesian South Pacific. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers The Oceanic languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, containing approximately 450 languages The over 200 Central-Eastern Oceanic languages form a branch of the Oceanic Language family within the Austronesian languages. The family of Micronesian languages is a branch of the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages. The family of Micronesian Proper languages is a subgroup of the Micronesian languages. The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI is a Micronesian nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States This is a list of bodies that regulate Standard languages Natural languages Auxiliary languages Interlingua The auxiliary language ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

The Marshallese language (Marshallese: Kajin M̧ajeļ or Kajin Majõl ) is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI is a Micronesian nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

1 Sounds
2 Orthography
3 Grammar
4 Spelling
5 Text examples
- 5.1 Modern orthography
- 5.2 Older orthography
6 External links
7 Bibliography
8 Further reading

Sounds

Consonants

Marshallese has 22 consonants (five of which are written with digraphs), plus a supplementary velar central approximant consonant (often not written in the current orthography):

Primary		Bilabial		Dental			Palatal	Velar
Secondary		palatalized	velarized	palatalized	velarized	labialized	Palatal	velarized	labialized
Nasal		m /mʲ/	m̧ /mˠ/	n /n̪ʲ/	ņ /n̪ˠ/	ņw /n̪ˠʷ/		n̄ /ŋ/	n̄w /ŋʷ/
Plosive		p /pʲ/	b /bˠ/	j /t̪ʲ/	t /t̪ˠ/			k /k/	kw /kʷ/
Rhotic				r /r̪ʲ/	d /r̪ˠ/	dw /r̪ˠʷ/
Approximant	lateral			l /l̪ʲ/	ļ /l̪ˠ/	ļw /l̪ˠʷ/
Approximant	central						y /j/	h or ʔ /ɰ/	w /w/

Marshallese has a number of consonants with contrasting secondary articulations:
- palatalized consonants
- velarized consonants
- labialized-velarized consonants
The velarized bilabial stop is phonetically voiced. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet In Linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a Consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth such as /t/ /d/ /n/ and Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Palatalization or palatalisation (ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən generally refers to two phenomena As a process or the result of a process Velarization is a Secondary articulation of Consonants by which the back of the Tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the Palatalization or palatalisation (ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən generally refers to two phenomena As a process or the result of a process Velarization is a Secondary articulation of Consonants by which the back of the Tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the "Lip rounding" redirects here See Roundedness for the lip rounding of vowels Velarization is a Secondary articulation of Consonants by which the back of the Tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the "Lip rounding" redirects here See Roundedness for the lip rounding of vowels A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds are non-lateral Liquid consonants This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically though most of them share Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants Laterals are "L"-like Consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both A central or medial consonant is a Consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue Co-articulated consonants or complex consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous places of articulation. Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless

Vowels

Marshallese has four vowel phonemes each with several allophones:

Marshallese vowel			Simple realisations			Main orthographies
height		phoneme	unrounded		rounded	unrounded		rounded
height		phoneme	front	back		front	back
High	(close)	/ɨ/	[i]	[ɯ]	[u]	i	u
Upper Mid	(near-close)	/ɘ/	[ɪ]	[ɤ] (long)	[ʊ]	i (or ę)	o	ū (or ü)
Lower Mid	(open-mid)	/ɜ/	[e]	[ʌ] (short)	[o]	e	o̧ (or o̠)	ō (or ü)
Low	(open)	/ɐ/	[ɛ]	[ɑ]	[ɔ]	a		ā (or ä)

Marshallese vowels are not specified along the front-back and rounded-unrounded dimensions, but on the height and ATR dimensions (see the IPA classification of vowels in the table on the right). In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A near-close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly The open-mid vowels make a class of Vowel sounds used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as In Theoretical linguistics, underspecification is a phenomenon where certain features are omitted in Underlying representations Restricted underspecification A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as In Phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the Lips during the articulation of a Vowel. In Phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the Lips during the articulation of a Vowel. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic This means that a given vowel phoneme will have several different phonetic realizations. Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech

For example, the high vowel phoneme /ɨ/ may alternately be pronounced as [i], [ɯ], [u], [i͡ɯ], [i͡u], [ɯ͡i], [ɯ͡u], [u͡i], [u͡ɯ], depending on the context:

Specifically, vowels next to palatized consonants become front unrounded ([i], [ɪ], [e], [ɛ]),
vowels next to velarized consonants become back unrounded ([ɯ], [ɤ], [ʌ], [ɑ]),
and vowels next to labialized consonants become back rounded ([u], [ʊ], [o], [ɔ]).
When between two consonants of different types (e. g. , a velarized consonant and a labialized consonant), the vowels become diphthongs, beginning with the surface form found next to the preceding consonant, and ending with the surface form found next to the following consonant (e. g. , in the case of a vowel between a velarized and labialized consonant, the diphthongs would be [ɯ͡u], [ɤ͡ʊ], [ʌ͡o], [ɑ͡ɔ]:

Consonants secondary articulations	palatalized (m,p,n,j,r,l,y) /Cʲ_Cʲ/	velarized (m̧,b,ņ,t,d,ļ,h) /Cˠ_Cˠ/	labialized (ņw,dw,ļw,n̄w,kw,w) /Cˠʷ_Cˠʷ/	palatalized- velarized /Cʲ_Cˠ/	velarized- palatalized /Cˠ_Cʲ/	velarized- labialized /Cˠ_Cˠʷ/	labialized- velarized /Cˠʷ_Cˠ/	palatalized- labialized /Cʲ_Cˠʷ/	labialized- palatalized /Cˠʷ_Cʲ/
Vowel realisation	front unrounded	back unrounded	back rounded	front and back unrounded		back rounded and unrounded		complex
Phoneme	simple vowel allophones			diphthong allophones
i,u /ɨ/ (close)	[i]	[ɯ]	[u]	[i͡ɯ]	[ɯ͡i]	[ɯ͡u]	[u͡ɯ]	[i͡u]	[u͡i]
i(ę),o,ū /ɘ/ (near-close)	[ɪ]	[ɤ]	[ʊ]	[ɪ͡ɤ]	[ɤ͡ɪ]	[ɤ͡ʊ]	[ʊ͡ɤ]	[ɪ͡ʊ]	[ʊ͡ɪ]
e,o̧,ō /ɜ/ (open-mid)	[e]	[ʌ]	[o]	[e͡ʌ]	[ʌ͡e]	[ʌ͡o]	[o͡ʌ]	[e͡o]	[o͡e]
a,ā /ɐ/ (open)	[ɛ]	[ɑ]	[ɔ]	[ɛ͡ɑ]	[ɑ͡ɛ]	[ɑ͡ɔ]	[ɔ͡ɑ]	[ɛ͡ɔ]	[ɔ͡ɛ]

Syllable and phonotactics

Stress

Orthography

Marshallese underwent a change of orthography in recent times. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language However, most people still use the old orthography. It is written in a form of the Latin alphabet with unusual diacritic combinations. A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation There are different alphabetic systems in use by Marshallese speakers depending on religious affiliation, due to many schools being run by church groups. Each teacher uses his/her preferred method of teaching language. As a result, children who attend Catholic schools tend to use the same spellings because the teachers are trained by a small group of Maryknoll Sisters. Students in public schools vary their spelling from island to island, based upon what their teachers learned about language and spelling.

Here is the (current) alphabet (note that letters with a macron are usually represented with a tilde in printed texts, eg, ō becomes õ):

Base letter		Phonology	Letter with cedilla		Phonology	Letter with macron		Phonology
a	A	/ɐ/ [ɛ] /ɐ/ [ɑ]				ā (or ä)	Ā (or Ä)	/ɐ/ [ɔ]
b	B	/bˠ/
d	D	/r̪ˠ/
e	E	/ɜ/ [e]
i	I	/ɨ/ [i] /ɘ/ [ɪ]
j (or y)	J (or Y)	/j/ [ʒ] /j/ [j]
k	K	/k/
l	L	/l̪ʲ/	ļ (or ł)	Ļ (or Ł)	/l̪ˠ/
m	M	/mʲ/	m̧ (or m̠)	M̧ (or M̠)	/mˠ/
n	N	/n̪ʲ/	ņ (or n̠)	Ņ (or N̠)	/n̪ˠ/	n̄ (or ñ or ŋ)	N̄ (or Ñ or Ŋ)	/ŋ/
o	O	/ɘ/ [ɤ] (long)	o̧ (or o̠)	O̧ (or O̠)	/ɜ/ [ʌ] (short)	ō (or ö)	Ō (or Ö)	/ɜ/ [o]
p	P	/pʲ/
r	R	/r̪ʲ/
t	T	/t̪ˠ/
u	U	/ɨ/ [ɯ] /ɨ/ [u]				ū (or ü)	Ū (or Ü)	/ɘ/ [ʊ]
w	W	/w/ /ˠʷ/

Sometimes, the unusual combinations of letters with combining macrons are replaced by vowels with diaeresis and by ñ/Ñ (or by an ŋ/Ŋ letter), and the combining cedilla is replaced by ł/Ł, or underlined letters (or letters with combining macron below). An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either A macron, from Greek el μακρόv ( makrón) meaning "long" is a Diacritic ¯ placed over or under a Vowel which was originally Ñ (lower case ñ) is a letter of the modern Roman alphabet formed by an N with a diacritical Tilde. Ś is an S with an Acute accent. It is found in the Polish alphabet and it is used in some other countries Slavic usually ( Voiceless alveolo-palatal Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka (Latin

Finally, the velar approximant /ɰ/ may be seen written as h/H or ʔ (adding one more letter to the alphabet). And some orthographies make distinctions between allophones of the same palatal central approximant /j/ phoneme, i. e. between j/J [ʒ] and y/Y [j] (adding another letter to the alphabet).

Grammar

One Marshallese word is yokwe, which means both hello and good-bye. It also means love. The literal (although outdated) translation means "you are a rainbow. " It is also used as a term to show sympathy. (Compare Hawaiian aloha. The Hawaiian language (Hawaiian ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i) is an Austronesian language that takes its name from Hawai'i, the largest island in the tropical Aloha in the Hawaiian language means Affection, Love, Peace, Compassion ) This word may also be written iakwe and io̧kwe.

Spelling

Marshallese spelling is highly variable. Not only are there multiple orthographies in common use, but spelling is inconsistent within an orthography. For example, ejjelok (no or not) is sometimes spelled ejelok and aoleb is sometimes spelled aolep.

Text examples

Modern orthography

Here is the Hail Mary in Marshallese Unicode. The Hail Mary or Ave Maria ( Latin) is a traditional Christian Prayer asking for the Intercession of the Virgin Mary, the Compare with this scanned image to see how it should look with all the diacritics in place.

Io̧kwe eok Maria, kwo lōn̄ kōn
menin jouj;
Irooj ej pād ippam̧.
Kwo jeram̧m̧an iaan kōrā raņ im
ejeram̧m̧an ineen lo̧jiōm̧, Jesus.
O Maria kwojarjar, jinen Anij,
kwōn jar kōn kem rijjerawiwi.
Kiiō im ilo iien
amwōj mej. Amen.

Older orthography

Here is the Lord's Prayer as given in the 1982 Marshallese Bible, which uses the older orthography (most commonly used today). The Lord's Prayer, also known as the Our Father or Pater noster, is probably the best-known Prayer in Christianity.

Jememuij iljõñ:

En kwojarjar im utiej etam;

En itok am Ailiñ;

Kimin kõmõnmõn ankilam ilõl einwõt air kõmmõn ilõn.

Letok ñõn kim kijim rainin.

Jolok amuij bwid ibbam,

Einwõt kimij julok bwid ko an ro jet ibbem.

Am melejjoñe kim en jab ellã jen joñan,

Ak kwon kejbarok kim jen Eo Enana.

[Bwe am Ailiñ im kajur im aibuijuij indrio, Amen. ]

External links

Marshallese Phrasebook on the website for the Republic of Marshall Islands lists the Marshallese word for the Marshallese language as kajin Majöl
Peace Corps Marshall Islands Marshallese Language Training Manual (PDF, 275 KB; instead of macrons uses trema on vowels and tilde on n, and underlines instead of cedillas)
Everything2 page on Marshallese
Ethnologue report on Marshallese
Marshallese in the Rosetta Project
Marshallese Spelling Reforms article in the blog, "Far Outliers"
A Brief Introduction to Marshallese Phonology, a paper by Heather Willson

Bibliography

Bender, Byron W. The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to develop a contemporary version of the historic Rosetta Stone to (1968). Marshallese phonology. Oceanic Linguistics, 7, 16-35.
Bender, Byron W. (1969). Spoken Marshallese: an intensive language course with grammatical notes and glossary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0870220705
Bender, Byron W. (1969). Vowel dissimilation in Marshallese. In Working papers in linguistics (No. 11, pp. 88-96). University of Hawaii.
Bender, Byron W. (1973). Parallelisms in the morphophonemics of several Micronesian languages. Oceanic Linguistics, 12, 455-477.
Choi, John D. (1992). Phonetic underspecification and target interpolation: An acoustic study of Marshallese vowel allophony. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics (No. 82). [1]
Hale, Mark. (2007) Chapter 5 of Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method. Blackwell
Hale, Mark. (2000). Marshallese phonology, the phonetics-phonology interface and historical linguistics. The Linguistic Review, 17, 241-257.

Contents