Marshallese language

The Marshallese language (Marshallese: Kajin M̧ajeļ or Kajin Majõl ) is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands. There are two major dialects: Rälik (western) and Ratak (eastern).

Sounds

Consonants

Marshallese has 22 consonants (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 articulations:
  • palatalized consonants
  • velarized consonants
  • labio-velarized consonants
• The velarized bilabial plosive is phonetically voiced /bˠ/.
• The pronunciation of palatalized dental plosive /t̪ʲ/ can also sometimes be heard as /z/.^[1] They are allophones in Marshallese, and foreign postalveolar consonants and alveolar fricatives are typically assimilated as Marshallese j.

Vowels

Marshallese has four vowel phonemes each with several allophones:

Marshallese vowels are not specified along the front-back and rounded-unrounded dimensions, but on the height and ATR dimensions (see the IPA classification of vowels in the table on the right). This means that a given vowel phoneme will have several different phonetic realizations.

For example, the high vowel phoneme /ɨ/ may alternately be pronounced [i], [ɯ], [u], [i͡ɯ], [i͡u], [ɯ͡i], [ɯ͡u], [u͡i], [u͡ɯ], depending on the context:

• Specifically, vowels next to palatized consonants become front unrounded ([i], [ɪ], [e], [ɛ]),
• vowels next to velarized consonants become back unrounded ([ɯ], [ɤ], [ʌ], [ɑ]),
• and vowels next to labialized consonants become back rounded ([u], [ʊ], [o], [ɔ]).
• 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 [ɯ͡u], [ɤ͡ʊ], [ʌ͡o], [ɑ͡ɔ]:

Syllable and phonotactics

This section requires expansion.

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, velarization 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.
• If both consonants are velarized, the vowel becomes a back vowel.
• 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 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 approximant:

• [j] if the vowel is a front vowel.
• [ɰ] if the vowel is a back vowel.
• [w] if the vowel is a rounded vowel.

Stress

This section requires expansion.

Orthography

Marshallese underwent a change of orthography in recent times. However, most people still use the old orthography. It is written in a form of the Latin alphabet with unusual diacritic 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) alphabet (note that letters with a macron are usually represented with a tilde in printed texts, eg, ō becomes õ):

Sometimes, the unusual combinations of letters with combining macrons are replaced by vowels with diaeresis and by ñ/Ñ (or by an ŋ/Ŋ letter), and the combining cedilla is replaced by ł/Ł, or underlined letters (or letters with combining macron below).

Finally, the velar approximant /ɰ/ may be seen written as h/H or ʔ (adding one more letter to the alphabet). And some orthographies make distinctions between allophones of the same palatal central approximant /j/ phoneme, i.e. between j/J [ʒ] and y/Y [j] (adding another letter to the alphabet).^{[citation needed]}

Grammar

This section requires expansion.

One Marshallese word is yokwe, 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 Hawaiian aloha.) This word may also be written iakwe and io̧kwe.

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.

1. juon
2. ruo
3. jilu
4. emen
5. lalim
6. jiljino
7. jiljilimjuon
8. rualitok (ejino)
9. ruatimjuon (ejilimjuon)
10. joñoul

Spelling

This section requires expansion.

Marshallese spelling is highly variable. Not only are there multiple orthographies in common use, but spelling is inconsistent within an orthography. For example, ejjelok (no or not) is sometimes spelled ejelok and aoleb is sometimes spelled aolep.

Text examples

Modern orthography

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.

Older orthography

Here is the Lord's Prayer as given in the 1982 Marshallese Bible, which uses the older orthography (most commonly used today).

Jememuij iljõñ:

En kwojarjar im utiej etam;

En itok am Ailiñ;

Kimin kõmõnmõn ankilam ilõl einwõt air kõmmõn ilõn.

Letok ñõn kim kijim rainin.

Jolok amuij bwid ibbam,

Einwõt kimij julok bwid ko an ro jet ibbem.

Am melejjoñe kim en jab ellã jen joñan,

Ak kwon kejbarok kim jen Eo Enana.

[Bwe am Ailiñ im kajur im aibuijuij indrio, Amen.]

External links

Marshallese language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• 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

Bibliography

• Bender, Byron W. (1968). Marshallese phonology. Oceanic Linguistics, 7, 16-35.
• Bender, Byron W. (1969). Spoken Marshallese: an intensive language course with grammatical notes and glossary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0870220705
• Bender, Byron W. (1969). Vowel dissimilation 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). [1]
• Hale, Mark. (2007) Chapter 5 of Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method. Blackwell
• Hale, Mark. (2000). Marshallese phonology, the phonetics-phonology interface and historical linguistics. The Linguistic Review, 17, 241-257.

Further reading

• Pagotto, L. (1987). Verb subcategorization and verb derivation in Marshallese: a lexicase analysis.

References

1. ^ YouTube