Chuukese (), also rendered Trukese (), is a Chuukic language of the Austronesian language family spoken primarily on the islands of Chuuk in the

Caroline Islands The Caroline Islands (or the Carolines) are a widely scattered archipelago of tiny islands in the western Pacific Ocean, to the north of New Guinea. Politically, they are divided between the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the cen ...

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, Poly ...

. There are communities of speakers in

Pohnpei Pohnpei (formerly known as Ponape or Ascension, from Pohnpeian: "upon (''pohn'') a stone altar (''pei'')") is an island of the Senyavin Islands which are part of the larger Caroline Islands group. It belongs to Pohnpei State, one of the fou ...

, and

Guam Guam ( ; ) is an island that is an Territories of the United States, organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. Guam's capital is Hagåtña, Guam, Hagåtña, and the most ...

. Estimates show that there are about 45,900 speakers in Micronesia.

Classification

Chuukese is an

Austronesian language The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

of the Micronesian subbranch. It is one of the dialects making up the Chuukic subgroup of Micronesian languages, together with its close relatives like Woleaian, and Carolinian.

Phonology

Chuukese has the unusual feature of permitting word-initial geminate (double) consonants. The common ancestor of Western Micronesian languages is believed to have had this feature, but most of its modern descendants have lost it. and are different in orthography, and both older and current transcribe the sound . Consonants are doubled in Chuuk when they have a voiceless sound. Some consonant combinations are frequently denasalized between vowels when doubled. can be heard as either central or back .

Orthography

Chuukese is one of the few languages allowing for word initial double consonants:

References

External links

Chuukese Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary DatabaseArchive
* Howard, Jocelyne.
CHUUKESE TRANSLATIONS
" ()

University of Hawaii A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

. * Kaipuleohone have archive materials for Chuukese includin
written materialsaudio recordings
and additional audio recordings from Brian Diettrich's MA thesis.
Portland State University Multicultural Topics in Communications Sciences & Disorders , Chuukese
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chuukese Language Languages of the Federated States of Micronesia Chuukic languages