|
Marshallese Language
Marshallese ( or ), also known as Ebon, is a Micronesian language spoken in the Marshall Islands. The language of the Marshallese people, it is spoken by nearly all of the country's population of 59,000, making it the principal language. There are also roughly 27,000 Marshallese citizens residing in the United States, nearly all of whom speak Marshallese, as well as residents in other countries such as Nauru and Kiribati. There are two major dialects, the western Ralik Chain, Rālik and the eastern Ratak Chain, Ratak. Classification Marshallese, a Micronesian languages, Micronesian language, is a member of the Eastern Oceanic languages, Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian languages. The closest linguistic relatives of Marshallese are the other Micronesian languages, including Gilbertese language, Gilbertese, Nauruan language, Nauruan, Pohnpeian language, Pohnpeian, Mokilese language, Mokilese, Chuukese language, Chuukese, Carolinian people, Refaluwasch, and Kosraean language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SIL International
SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages, and aid minority language development. Based on its language documentation work, SIL publishes a database, '' Ethnologue'', of its research into the world's languages, and develops and publishes software programs for language documentation, such as FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx) and Lexique Pro. Its main offices in the United States are located at the International Linguistics Center in Dallas, Texas. History Early History William Cameron Townsend, a Presbyterian minister, founded the organization in 1934, after undertaking a Christian mission with the Disciples of Christ among the Kaqchikel Maya people in Guatemala in the earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pohnpeian Language
Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands. Pohnpeian has approximately 30,000 (estimated) native speakers living in Pohnpei and its outlying atolls and islands with another 10,000-15,000 (estimated) living off island in parts of the US mainland, Hawaii, and Guam. It is the second-most widely spoken native language of the Federated States of Micronesia the first being Chuukese. Pohnpeian features a " high language", referred to as or including specialized vocabulary used when speaking to, or about people of high rank. Classification Pohnpeian is most closely related to the Chuukic languages of Chuuk (formerly Truk). Ngatikese, Pingelapese and Mwokilese of the Pohnpeic languages are closely related languages to Pohnpeian. Pohnpeian shares 81% lexical similarity with Pingelapese, 75% with Mokilese, and 36% with Chuukese. Pohnpeian employs a great deal of loanwords from colonial languages such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palau
Palau, officially the Republic of Palau, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the western Pacific Ocean. The Republic of Palau consists of approximately 340 islands and is the western part of the Caroline Islands, while the eastern and central parts make up the Federated States of Micronesia. It has a total area of , making it the sixteenth smallest country in the world. The most populous island is Koror, home to the country's most populous city of the same name. The capital, Ngerulmud, is located on the largest island of Babeldaob, in Melekeok State. Palau shares maritime boundaries with international waters to the north, the Federated States of Micronesia to the east, Indonesia to the south, and the Philippines to the northwest. The country was originally settled approximately 3,000 years BP by migrants from Maritime Southeast Asia. Palau was first drawn on a European map by the Bohemian missionary Paul Klein based on a description g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palauan Language
Palauan () is a Malayo-Polynesian language native to the Republic of Palau, where it is one of the two official languages, alongside English. It is widely used in day-to-day life in the country. Palauan is not closely related to other Malayo-Polynesian languages and its exact classification within the branch is unclear. Classification It is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family of languages, and is one of only two indigenous languages in Micronesia that are not part of the Oceanic sub-branch of that family, the other being Chamorro (see , , , and ). Roger Blench (2015) argues that based on evidence from fish names, Palauan had early contact with Oceanic languages either directly or indirectly via the Yapese language. These include fish names for the sea eel, yellowfin tuna ('' Thunnus albacares''), left-eye flounder ('' Bothus mancus''), triggerfish, sailfish, barracuda ('' Sphyraena barracuda''), damsel fish ('' Abudefduf'' sp.), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nukuoro Language
The Nukuoro language is a Polynesian Outlier language, spoken by about 1,200 people on Nukuoro Atoll and on Pohnpei, two islands of Pohnpei State within the Federated States of Micronesia. Nukuoro is a remote coral atoll with a population of about 150, where the primary language is Nukuoro. An additional several hundred Nukuoro speakers live in Kolonia, Pohnpei, with smaller diaspora communities elsewhere in Micronesia and in the United States. Most Nukuoro speakers, particularly those that live away from Nukuoro Atoll, are multilingual in Pohnpeian and/or English; some older Nukuoro speakers also know German or Japanese. Classification Nukuoro belongs to the Polynesian language family, a branch of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian family. It is closely related to other Polynesian languages, with considerable phonological and lexical similarities. Within the Polynesian branch, Nukuoro is a member of the Polynesian Outliers, which are spoken by island populations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kapingamarangi Language
Kapingamarangi is a Polynesian language spoken in the Federated States of Micronesia. It had 3,000 native speakers in 1995. The language is closely related to the Nukuoro language. Introduction History The Kapingamarangi language is a language spoken primarily on the Kapingamarangi atoll, within the Federated States of Micronesia. People from Kapingamarangi have also settled on other islands in the South Pacific Ocean, such as Nukuoro, Pohnpei, and Palau, bringing the language with them. A small number of Kapingamarangi speakers have immigrated outside of Micronesia as well. Kapingamarangi was not written until the 20th century, first using Japanese characters. This system was introduced by a Japanese immigrant, but was not broadly adopted. Sometime after 1917, a missionary from Nukuoro introduced the Nukuoro writing system (based on the Latin alphabet) and this was more broadly adopted. The writing system was idiosyncratically adapted to Kapingamarangi, however, leading t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polynesian Outlier
Polynesian outliers are a number of culturally Polynesian societies that geographically lie outside the main region of Polynesian influence, known as the Polynesian Triangle; instead, Polynesian outliers are scattered in the two other Pacific subregions, Melanesia and Micronesia. Based on archaeological and linguistic analysis, these islands are considered to have been colonized by seafaring Polynesians, mostly from the area of Tonga, Samoa and Tuvalu. The closest Polynesian outliers, Anuta and Tikopia in Solomon Islands, were settled some time between the 10th and 13th centuries and subsequently received multiple waves of Polynesian immigration, while the farthest outlier, Nukuoro in the Federated States of Micronesia, was only settled in the 18th century. General definition The region commonly termed "Polynesia" includes thousands of islands, most of them arranged in a rough triangle bounded by Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. Outside this Polynesian Triangle, in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yap State
Yap State ( or ) is one of the four states of the Federated States of Micronesia, located in the westernmost portion of the country. The state borders Palau to the southwest, Guam to the north, and Chuuk State to the east. According to the state's population census carried out in 2020, the total population is 11,577 residing across a total area of 119.54 sq km (46.15 sq mi), though a large majority of the area is water. The only town area in the state, Colonia, serves as the state capital. What is now current-day Yap State and some parts of Chuuk State were the historical Yapese Empire, which at its peak, controlled 1,300 km of the western Pacific comprising all the inhabited islands and atolls between Yap and Chuuk. The rulers of the chiefdom of Gagil in Yap maintained sovereignty of these islands to the east and extracted resources and tribute, maintaining close economic and political relationships with the different island groups. After losing its influence and becoming inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yapese Language
Yapese is an Austronesian language in the Oceanic branch spoken on the island of Yap, in the Federated States of Micronesia. It has been difficult to classify the language further, but Yapese may prove to be one of the Admiralty Islands languages. The Yapese language refers to the language spoken specifically on the Yap Main Islands, and does not include the Chuukic languages spoken in the Yap Neighboring Islands: Ulithian, Woleaian, and Satawalese (and to an extent, Nguluwan). Orthography Written Yapese uses the Latin script. In Yapese spelling as practiced until the 1970s, the glottal stop was not written with an explicit character. A word-final glottal stop was represented by doubling the final vowel letter. Glottalization of consonants was represented with an apostrophe. In the 1970s an orthography was created which uses double vowel letters to represent long vowels; and because of the ambiguity that would occur if the glottal stop was not written, the glottal st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micronesia
Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of approximately 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: Maritime Southeast Asia to the west, Polynesia to the east, and Melanesia to the south—as well as with the wider community of Austronesian peoples. The region has a tropical marine climate and is part of the Oceanian realm. It includes four main archipelagos—the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands — as well as numerous islands that are not part of any archipelago. Political control of areas within Micronesia varies depending on the island, and is distributed among six sovereign nations. Some of the Caroline Islands are part of the Republic of Palau and some are part of the Federated States of Micronesia (often shortened to "FSM" or "Micronesia"—not to be confused with the identical name for the overall region). The Gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kosraean Language
Kosraean ( ; sometimes rendered Kusaiean) is the language spoken on the islands of Kosrae (Kusaie), a nation-state of the Federated States of Micronesia, Caroline Islands. In 2001 there were approximately 8,000 speakers in Micronesia, and 9,060 in all countries. Kosraean features possessive classes such as "sihk" for "mine" when referring to dwellings, and "nihmuhk" for "mine" when referring to drinks. Introduction History Kosrae is the easternmost island in the Federated States of Micronesia. The island was under nominal Spanish sovereignty since 1668, but it was not effectively occupied until 1885. The Spaniards converted the local population to Christianity and had control over the island until 1898 when the Spaniards lost the Spanish–American War to the United States. Spain sold the Caroline islands (of which Kosrae is a part) to Germany for 25 million pesetas. Thus, it came under German control, until they were defeated in World War I, at which time the island then fell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
