Marshallese language

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{{language |name=Marshallese |nativename=Kajin M̧ajeļ |familycolor=Austronesian |states=Marshall Islands, Nauru |speakers=43,900 (1979) |fam2=Malayo-Polynesian |fam3=Oceanic |fam4=Central-Eastern |fam5=Micronesian |fam6=Micronesian Proper |nation=Marshall Islands (with English) |iso1=mh|iso2=mah|iso3=mah}}

The Marshallese language (Marshallese: Kajin M̧ajeļ) or Ebon is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands.

Contents 1 Sounds 1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels 1.3 Syllable & phonotactics 1.4 Stress 2 Orthography 3 Grammar 4 Text example 5 External links 6 Bibliography

Sounds

Consonants

Marshallese has 22 consonants:

		Bilabial		Dental			Palatal	Velar
		palatal	velar	palatal	velar	labial		velar	labial
Stop		p Template:IPA	b Template:IPA	j Template:IPA	t Template:IPA			k Template:IPA	kw Template:IPA
Nasal		m Template:IPA	m̧ Template:IPA	n Template:IPA	ņ Template:IPA	ņw Template:IPA		n̄ Template:IPA	n̄w Template:IPA
Rhotic				r Template:IPA	d Template:IPA	dw Template:IPA
Approximant	central						y Template:IPA	? Template:IPA	w Template:IPA
	lateral			l Template:IPA	ļ Template:IPA	ļw Template:IPA

• Marshallese has a number of consonants with contrasting secondary articulations:
  • palatalized consonants
  • velarized consonants
  • labialized-velarized consonants
• The velarized bilabial stop is phonetically voiced.

Vowels

Marshallese has 4 vowels:

High	Template:IPA
Upper Mid	Template:IPA
Lower Mid	Template:IPA
Low	Template:IPA

Marshallese vowels are not specified along the front-back and rounded-unrounded dimensions. This means that a given vowel will have several different phonetic realizations. For example, the high vowel Template:IPA may alternately be pronounced as [i], Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, or Template:IPA, depending on the context. Specifically, vowels next to palatized consonants become front unrounded (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA), vowels next to velarized consonants become back unrounded (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA), and vowels next to labialized consonants become back rounded (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA). 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 Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA:

	Cʲ_Cʲ	Cˠ_Cˠ	Cˠʷ_Cˠʷ	Cʲ_Cˠ	Cʲ_Cˠʷ	Cˠ_Cʲ	Cˠ_Cˠʷ	Cˠʷ_Cʲ	Cˠʷ_Cˠ
/ɨ/	[i]	[ɯ]	[u]	[i͡ɯ]	[i͡u]	[ɯ͡i]	[ɯ͡u]	[u͡i]	[u͡ɯ]
/ɵ/	[ɪ]	[ɤ]	[ʊ]	[ɪ͡ɤ]	[ɪ͡ʊ]	[ɤ͡ɪ]	[ɤ͡ʊ]	[ʊ͡ɪ]	[ʊ͡ɤ]
/ɜ/	[e]	[ʌ]	[o]	[e͡ʌ]	[e͡o]	[ʌ͡e]	[ʌ͡o]	[o͡e]	[o͡ʌ]
/ɐ/	[ɛ]	[ɑ]	[ɔ]	[ɛ͡ɑ]	[ɛ͡ɔ]	[ɑ͡ɛ]	[ɑ͡ɔ]	[ɔ͡ɛ]	[ɔ͡ɑ]

Syllable & phonotactics

[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]

Stress

[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]

Orthography

Marshallese underwent a change of orthography in recent times. It is written in a form of the latin script with unusual diacritic combinations. There are different alphabetic systems in used by Marshallese speakers depending on religious affiliation.

Here is the (current) alphabet:

A Ā B D E I J K L Ļ M M̧ N Ņ N̄ O O̧ Ō P R T U Ū W

a ā b d e i j k l ļ m m̧ n ņ n̄ o o̧ ō p r t u ū w

Grammar

[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]

One Marshallese word is yokwe, which means both hello and good-bye. It also means love. (Compare Hawaiian aloha.) This word may also be written lakwe and io̧kwe.

Text example

Here is the Hail Mary in Marshallese Unicode. 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.

External links

Template:InterWiki

• 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
• Mark Hale: Phonological Change, which includes a long discussion of Marshallese historical phonology

Bibliography

• Bender, Byron W. (1968). Marshallese phonology. Oceanic Linguistics, 7, 16-35.
• Bender, Byron W. (1969). Spoken Marshallese. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
• Bender, Byron W. (1969). Vowel dissimulation 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).
• Hale, Mark. (2000). Marshallese phonology, the phonetics-phonology interface and historical linguistics. The Linguistic Review, 17, 241-257.bg:Маршалски език

br:Marchalleg de:Marshallische Sprache es:Idioma marshalés nl:Marshallees pt:Marshalês fi:Marshallin kieli sv:Marshalliska mh:Kajin M̧ajeļ