The
Marshallese language (Marshallese:
or
) is a
Malayo-Polynesian languageThe Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers. These are widely dispersed throughout the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia...
of the
Marshall IslandsThe Marshall Islands , officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. This nation of roughly 62,000 people is located north of Nauru and...
. There are two major dialects: Rälik (western) and Ratak (eastern).
Marshallese has 22
consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx...
s (five of which are written with digraphs), plus a supplementary velar central approximant consonant (often not written in the current orthography):
- Marshallese has a number of consonants with contrasting secondary articulation
Co-articulated consonants or complex consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous places of articulation. They may be divided into two classes, doubly articulated consonants with two primary places of articulation of the same manner , and consonants with secondary articulation, that is,...
s:
- palatalized consonants
- velarized consonants
- labio-velarized consonants
- The velarized bilabial plosive is phonetically voiced .
- The pronunciation of palatalized dental plosive can also sometimes be heard as .
The
Marshallese language (Marshallese:
or
) is a
Malayo-Polynesian languageThe Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers. These are widely dispersed throughout the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia...
of the
Marshall IslandsThe Marshall Islands , officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. This nation of roughly 62,000 people is located north of Nauru and...
. There are two major dialects: Rälik (western) and Ratak (eastern).
Consonants
Marshallese has 22
consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx...
s (five of which are written with digraphs), plus a supplementary velar central approximant consonant (often not written in the current orthography):
| Primary |
Bilabial |
DentalIn linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages...
|
Palatal |
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
| Secondary |
pal. Palatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
|
vel. Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant.In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of three diacritics:...
|
pal. Palatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
|
vel. Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant.In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of three diacritics:...
|
lab. Palatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
|
plain |
lab. |
| Nasal A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue...
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| Plosive |
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| Rhotic 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 some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum...
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| Approximant |
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- Marshallese has a number of consonants with contrasting secondary articulation
Co-articulated consonants or complex consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous places of articulation. They may be divided into two classes, doubly articulated consonants with two primary places of articulation of the same manner , and consonants with secondary articulation, that is,...
s:
- palatalized consonants
- velarized consonants
- labio-velarized consonants
- The velarized bilabial plosive is phonetically voiced .
- The pronunciation of palatalized dental plosive can also sometimes be heard as . They are allophone
In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word...
s in Marshallese, and foreign postalveolar consonantPostalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate .Among the fricatives and affricates, a subtype called...
s and alveolarAlveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
fricativeFricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
s are typically assimilated as Marshallese .
Vowels
Marshallese has four
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s each with several
allophoneIn phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word...
s:
| Marshallese vowel |
Simple realisations |
Main orthographies |
| height |
phoneme |
unrounded |
rounded |
unrounded |
rounded |
| front |
back |
front |
back |
| High 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 possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...
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(close) |
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| Upper Mid 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 to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-close vowels...
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(near-close) |
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| Lower Mid 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 two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...
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(open-mid) |
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| Low An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in nearly all spoken languages . The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...
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(open) |
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Marshallese vowels are not
specifiedIn theoretical linguistics, underspecification is a phenomenon where certain features are omitted in underlying representations. Restricted underspecification theory holds that features should only be underspecified if their values are predictable. For example, in English, all front vowels are...
along the
frontA 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 as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called...
-
backA 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 possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
and rounded-unrounded dimensions, but on the height and ATR dimensions (see the
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet
["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
classification of vowels in the table on the right). This means that a given vowel phoneme will have several different
phoneticPhonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and their physiological production, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status.Phonetics was studied as early as 2500 years ago in...
realizations.
For example, the high vowel phoneme may alternately be pronounced , , , , , , , , , depending on the context:
- Specifically, vowels next to palatized consonants become front unrounded ,
- vowels next to velarized consonants become back unrounded ,
- and vowels next to labialized consonants become back rounded .
- 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 , , , :
Consonants
secondary
articulations |
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| velarized
| palatalized
| labialized
| velarized
| labialized
| palatalized
Vowel
realisation |
front
unrounded |
back
unrounded |
back
rounded |
front and back
unrounded |
back
rounded and unrounded |
complex |
| Phoneme |
simple vowel allophones |
diphthong allophones |
(close) |
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(near-close) |
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(open-mid) |
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(open) |
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Syllable and phonotactics
Marshallese syllable structure is such that all syllables begin
and end with a consonant, with a vowel at the syllable's nucleus.
- The smallest possible one-syllable word is structured /CVC/.
- Multiple /CVC/ sequences can form a multi-syllable word, meaning that consonant clusters of no greater than two consonants can exist inside a word if surrounded by vowels: /CVCCVC/. The two consonants in a cluster are not required to agree by palatalization
Palatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
, velarizationVelarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant.In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of three diacritics:...
or labialization.
- It is also possible for a syllable's final consonant and the following syllable's first consonant to be shared, so /CVCVC/ is also possible.
In all cases, the vowel of each syllable assimilates to the consonants at both its sides.
- If both consonants are palatalized, the vowel becomes a front vowel
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 as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called...
.
- If both consonants are velarized, the vowel becomes a back vowel
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 possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
.
- If both consonants are labialized, the vowel becomes a rounded back vowel.
- If the two consonants are of two different categories, the vowel forms a diphthong
In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow...
in between them.
These multiple vowel articulations are a product of the different consonant phonemes that neighbor them on each side. They are not vowel phonemes in their own right, as Marshallese vowels are phonemically distinguished only by vowel height. Therefore, a vowel's backness or roundedness is relevant to the consonant phonemes, and not to the vowel phoneme.
Marshallese orthography permits that words can begin and end with vowels, but this merely means the consonant phoneme on the "vowel" end of the word is actually an unwritten
approximantApproximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Approximants are...
: if the vowel is a front vowel. if the vowel is a back vowel. if the vowel is a rounded vowel.
Orthography
Marshallese underwent a change of
orthographyThe orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós and γράφειν...
in recent times. However, most people still use the old orthography. It is written in a form of the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
with unusual
diacriticA diacritic is an ancillary glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective...
combinations. 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)
alphabetAn alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...
(note that letters with a
macronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long syllable in Græco-Roman metrics, but now also indicates that the vowel is long...
are usually represented with a tilde in printed texts, eg, ō becomes õ):
| Base letter | Phonology |
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| Letter with cedilla | Phonology |
|---|
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| Letter with macron | Phonology |
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(or ) |
(or ) |
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| (or ) |
(or ) |
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| (or ) |
(or ) |
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| (or ) |
(or ) |
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| (or ) |
(or ) |
| (or or ) |
(or or ) |
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| (or ) |
(or ) |
| (or ) |
(or ) |
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(or ) |
(or ) |
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Sometimes, the unusual combinations of letters with combining macrons are replaced by vowels with diaeresis and by (or by an letter), and the combining cedilla is replaced by , or underlined letters (or letters with combining macron below).
Finally, the velar approximant may be seen written as h/H or (adding one more letter to the alphabet). And some orthographies make distinctions between allophones of the same palatal central approximant phoneme, i.e. between j/J and y/Y (adding another letter to the alphabet).
Grammar
One Marshallese word is
, 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
HawaiianThe Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
.) This word may also be written
and
.
Cardinal Numbers
This includes the cardinal numbers one through ten in the Rälik dialect. Ratak forms are the same except for those in the parentheses.
- juon
- ruo
- jilu
- emen
- lalim
- jiljino
- jiljilimjuon
- rualitok (ejino)
- ruatimjuon (ejilimjuon)
- joñoul
Spelling
Marshallese spelling is highly variable. Not only are there multiple orthographies in common use, but spelling is inconsistent within an orthography. For example,
(no or not) is sometimes spelled
and
is sometimes spelled
.
Modern orthography
Here is the
Hail MaryThe Angelic Salutation, Hail Mary, or Ave Maria is a traditional Catholic prayer asking for the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Hail Mary is used within Roman Catholicism, and it forms the basis of the Rosary...
in Marshallese Unicode.
Compare with this scanned image to see how it should look with all the diacritics in place.
Older orthography
Here is the
Lord's PrayerThe Lord's Prayer, also known as the Our Father or Pater noster, is perhaps the best-known prayer in Christianity. On Easter Sunday 2007 it was estimated that 2 billion Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians read, recited, or sang the short prayer in hundreds of languages...
as given in the 1982 Marshallese Bible, which uses the older orthography (most commonly used today).
External links
Further reading
- Pagotto, L. (1987). Verb subcategorization and verb derivation in Marshallese: a lexicase analysis.