| Palauan | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: |  Palau Guam |
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| Total speakers: | about 15,000[1] | |
| Language family: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP Sunda-Sulawesi Palauan |
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| Writing system: | Latin alphabet | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Palau |
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| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | pau | |
| ISO 639-3: | pau | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Palau, officially the Republic of Palau (Beluu er a Belau is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles (800 km) east Guam ( Chamorro: cha Guåhån) officially the Territory of Guam, is an island in the western Pacific Ocean and is an organized unincorporated 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 Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a branch of the Austronesian family that are thought to have dispersed from a possible homeland in Sulawesi. The Sunda-Sulawesi languages (or Inner Hesperonesian or Inner Western Malayo-Polynesian languages) are a branch of the Austronesian family posited A writing system is a type of Symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in Language. Palau, officially the Republic of Palau (Beluu er a Belau is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles (800 km) east 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 | ||
Palauan (also spelled Belauan) is one of the two nationally recognized official languages spoken in the Republic of Palau (the second being English). Palau, officially the Republic of Palau (Beluu er a Belau is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles (800 km) east English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States It is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, and is considered to be one of two languages in Micronesia (the second being Chamorro) belonging to the Western Malayo-Polynesian group, all others considered to be members of either the Micronesian or Polynesian outlier subgroups of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Micronesia, from the Greek mikros (μικρός (meaning small) and nesos (νῆσος (meaning island) is a Subregion Chamorro ( Chamoru) is the native language of the Chamorro or Chamoru of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The Western Malayo-Polynesian languages, also known as the Hesperonesian languages, are those Malayo-Polynesian languages which are not in the Central-Eastern The family of Micronesian languages is a branch of the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages. The Samoic languages are one of the primary classes of Polynesian languages, encompassing the Polynesian languages of Samoa, Tuvalu, American The family of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (EMP languages is a subgroup of the Central Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages.
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Sounds
The phonemic inventory of Palauan consists of 10 consonants and 6 vowels. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU [2] Phonetic charts of the vowel and consonant phonemes are provided below, utilizing the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech
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While the phonemic inventory of Palauan is relatively small, comparatively, many phonemes contain at least two allophones that surface as the result of various phonological processes within the language. In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning The full phonetic inventory of consonants is given below in IPA (the phonemic inventory of vowels, above, is complete).
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Diphthongs
Palauan contains several diphthongs (sequences of vowels within a single syllable). In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds A list of diphthongs and corresponding Palauan words containing them are given below, adapted from (Zuraw 2003).
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The extent to which it is accurate to characterize each of these vowel sequences as diphthongs has been a matter of debate, as in (Wilson 1972), (Flora 1974), (Josephs 1975), (Zuraw 2003). Nevertheless, a number of the sequences above, such as /ui/, clearly behave as diphthongs given their interaction with other aspects of Palauan phonology like stress shift and vowel reduction. Others do not behave as clearly like monosyllabic diphthongs.
Writing System
In the early 1970s, the Palau Orthography Committee worked with linguists from the University of Hawaii to devise a common writing system based on the Latin alphabet. The University of Hawaii, formally the University of Hawaii System and popularly known as UH, is a public co-educational college and university system that confers A writing system is a type of Symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in Language. [3] The resulting orthography was largely based on the "one sound/one symbol" notion of the pre-Chomskyan structuralists, yielding an alphabet of ten native Palauan consonants (plus two double consonants), five consonants used exclusively in borrowed words, and five vowels (plus four double vowels). Avram Noam Chomsky (noʊm ˈtʃɑmski born December 7 1928 is an American linguist, Philosopher, cognitive scientist, Political For the use of structuralism in biology see Structuralism (biology Structuralism is an approach to the human sciences that attempts to analyze An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either The 20 vowel sequences listed above under the heading Diphthongs are also all officially recognized in the orthography.
On May 10, 2007, the Palauan Senate passed Bill No. 7-79, which mandates that educational institutions recognize the Palauan orthography laid out in (Josephs 1997) and (Josephs 1999). Events 1291 - Scottish Nobles recognize the authority of Edward I of England. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. The bill also establishes an Orthography Commission to maintain the language as it develops as well as to oversee and regulate any additions or modifications to the current official orthography.
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Syntax
Word Order
The word order of Palauan is usually thought to be Verb-Object-Subject (VOS), but this has been a matter of some debate in the linguistic literature. In Linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the different ways in which languages arrange the constituents of their sentences relative to each other and the systematic In Linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification [4] Those who accept the VOS analysis of Palauan word order generally treat Palauan as a pro-drop language with preverbal subject agreement morphemes, final pronominal subjects are deleted (or null). A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping" is a Language in which certain classes of Pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the In Languages agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In morpheme-based morphology, a null morpheme is a Morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null Affix (an empty string of phonological
Example 1: Ak milenga er a ringngo pro. (means: "I ate the apple. ")
In the preceding example, the null pronoun pro is the subject "I," while the clause-initial ak is the first person singular subject agreement morpheme.
On the other hand, those who have analyzed Palauan as SVO necessarily reject the pro-drop analysis, instead analyzing the subject agreement morphemes as subject pronouns. In the preceding example, SVO-advocates assume that there is no pro and that the morpheme ak is simply an overt subject pronoun meaning "I. " One potential problem with this analysis is that it fails to explain why overt (3rd person) subjects occur clause-finally in the presence of a co-referring 3rd person "subject pronoun" --- treating the subject pronouns as agreement morphemes circumvents this weakness. Consider the following example.
Example 2: Ng milenga er a ringngo a Alan. (means: "Alan ate the apple. ")
Proponents of the SVO analysis must assume a shifting of the subject a Alan "Alan" from clause-initial to clause-final position, a movement operation that has not received acceptance cross-linguistically, but see (Josephs 1975) for discussion.
Palauan Phrases
Some common and useful words and phrases in Palauan are listed below, with their English translations. [5]
| Palauan | English |
|---|---|
| Alii! | Hello! |
| Ungil tutau. | Good morning. |
| Ungil sueleb. | Good afternoon. |
| Ungil kebesengei. | Good evening. |
| A ngklek a ___. | My name is ___. |
| Ng techa ngklem? | What's your name? |
| Ke ua ngerang? | How are you? |
| Ak mesisiich. | I'm fine. |
| Ak chad er a ___. | I'm from ___. |
| Belau | Palau |
| Merikel | U. S. A. |
| Ingklis | England |
| Siabal | Japan |
| Sina | China |
| Ke chad er ker el beluu? | Where are you from? |
| Ke mlechell er ker el beluu? | Where were you born? |
| Ak mlechell er a ___. | I was born in ___. |
| Ng tela rekim? | How old are you? |
| Ng ___ a rekik. | I am ___ years old. |
| Ng tela a dengua er kau? | What's your phone number? |
| A dengua er ngak a ___. | My phone number is ___. |
| Ke kiei er ker? | Where do you live? |
| Ak kiei er a ___. | I live ___. |
| Chochoi. | Yes |
| Ng diak. | No |
| Adang. | Please. |
| Sulang. | Thank you. |
| Ke mo er ker? | Where are you going? |
| Mechikung. | Goodbye. |
Notes
- ^ According to the 2005 Palau Census, there are 18,544 people aged 5 years or older residing in the Republic of Palau, of whom 4,718 do not speak Palauan. There are thus 13,826 Palauan speakers in Palau. This number does not include native Palauan speakers residing outside of Palau.
- ^ Only 5 vowel phonemes are listed in (Wilson 1972) because she avoids the issue of how to treat indeterminate underlying vowels. The vowel chart here tentatively reflects the analysis of (Flora 1974), who treats indeterminate vowels as instances of underlying ə. Furthermore, the analysis of Palauan [w] in (Flora 1974) treats it as a phoneme distinct from /u/, while [w] is merely an allophone of /u/ according (Wilson 1972). The consonant chart tentatively reflects Wilson's analysis.
- ^ The final report of the Palau Orthography Committee was released in 1972.
- ^ See (Waters 1980), (Georgopoulos 1986), and (Georgopoulos 1991) for arguments in favor of treating Palauan as VOS. cf. (Wilson 1972) and (Josephs 1975), which assume an SVO order for Palauan. In Linguistic typology, subject-verb-object ( SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first the Verb second and the object
- ^ See (Josephs 1990) for a more comprehensive list of words and phrases.
References
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External links
- Ethnologue report for language code:pau. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Retrieved on 05 September 2005.
- A Palauan Linguistic Bibliography. Retrieved on 09 February 2008.
- Airai, Palau: Language. Retrieved on 12 October 2007.
- République de Belau (French). Retrieved on 20 June 2007.
- PREL - Pacific Area Language Materials: Palauan. Retrieved on 09 February 2008.
- Japanese and Other Loanwords in Palauan. Retrieved on 03 February 2008.
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