Marshallese language

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

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):

Primary		Bilabial		Dental			Palatal	Velar
Secondary		palatalized	velarized	palatalized	velarized	labialized		velarized	labialized
Nasal		m	m̧	n	ņ	ņw		n̄	n̄w
Stop (occlusive)		p	b	j	t			k	kw
Rhotic (fricative )				r	d	dw
Approximant	lateral			l	ļ	ļw
Approximant	central						y	h or ʔ	w

Marshallese has a number of consonants with contrasting secondary articulations:
- palatalized consonants
- velarized consonants
- labialized-velarized consonants
- (note that central approximants in the table above actually have a single articulation)
The velarized bilabial stop is phonetically voiced.

Vowels

Marshallese has 4 vowel phonemes each with several allophones:

Marshallese vowel			Simple realisations			Main orthographies
height		phoneme	unrounded		rounded	unrounded		rounded
height		phoneme	front	back		front	back
High	(close)	/ɨ/		^*	i	u
Upper Mid	(near-close)	/ɵ/		^*	i (or ę)	o	ū (or ü)
Lower Mid	(open-mid)	/ɜ/		[ʌ (short)	^*	e	o̧ (or o)	ō (or ü)
Low	(open)	/ɐ/		[ɑ	^*	a		ā (or ä)

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 as ^*," target="_blank" >^*," target="_blank" >^*," target="_blank" >^*, depending on the context:

Specifically, vowels next to palatized consonants become front unrounded (^*," target="_blank" >[ɛ),
vowels next to velarized consonants become back unrounded (^*," target="_blank" >[ɑ),
and vowels next to labialized consonants become back rounded (^*," target="_blank" >[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 ^*," target="_blank" >[ɑ͡ɔ:

Consonants secondary articulations	palatalized (m,p,n,j,r,l,y) /Cʲ_Cʲ/	velarized (m̧,b,ņ,t,d,ļ,h) /Cˠ_Cˠ/	labialized (ņw,dw,ļw,n̄w,kw,w) /Cˠʷ_Cˠʷ/	palatalized- velarized /Cʲ_Cˠ/	velarized- palatalized /Cˠ_Cʲ/	velarized- labialized /Cˠ_Cˠʷ/	labialized- velarized /Cˠʷ_Cˠ/	palatalized- labialized /Cʲ_Cˠʷ/	labialized- palatalized /Cˠʷ_Cʲ/
Vowel realisation	front unrounded	back unrounded	back rounded	front and back unrounded		back rounded and unrounded		complex
Phoneme	simple vowel allophones			diphtong allophones
i,u /ɨ/ (close)	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*
i(ę),o,ū /ɵ/ (near-close)	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*
e,o̧,ō /ɜ/ (open-mid)	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*
a,ā /ɐ/ (open)	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*	^*

Syllable & phonotactics

Stress

Orthography

Marshallese underwent a change of orthography in recent times. However, most people still use the old orthagraphy. It is written in a form of the latin script with unusual diacritic combinations. There are different alphabetic systems in use by Marshallese speakers depending on religious affiliation.

Here is the (current) alphabet (note that letters with a macron are usually represented with a tilde in printed texts, eg, ō becomes õ):

Base letter		Phonology	Letter with cedilla		Phonology	Letter with macron		Phonology
a	A	/ɐ/ />/ɐ/ [ɑ				ā (or ä)	Ā (or Ä)	/ɐ/ ^*
b	B	/bˠ/
d	D	/rˠ/
e	E	/ɜ/ ^*
i	I	/ɨ/ />/ɵ/ [ɪ
j (or y)	J (or Y)	/j/ />/j/ [j
k	K	/k/
l	L	/lʲ/	ļ (or ł)	Ļ (or Ł)	/lˠ/
m	M	/mʲ/	m̧ (or m)	M̧ (or M)	/mˠ/
n	N	/nʲ/	ņ (or n)	Ņ (or N)	/nˠ/	n̄ (or ñ or ŋ)	N̄ (or Ñ or Ŋ)	/ŋ/
o	O	/ɵ/ ^* (long)	o̧ (or o)	O̧ (or O)	/ɜ/ ^* (short)	ō (or ö)	Ō (or Ö)	/ɜ/ ^*
p	P	/pʲ/
r	R	/rʲ/
t	T	/tˠ/
u	U	/ɨ/ />/ɨ/ [u				ū (or ü)	Ū (or Ü)	/ɵ/ ^*
w	W	/w/ /ʷ/

Sometimes, the unusual combinations of letters with combining macrons are replaced by vowels with diaeresis and by n/N with tilde (or by an eng letter), and the combining cedilla is replaced by l/L with stroke, 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 /j/ phoneme, i.e. between j/J and y/Y (adding another letter to the alphabet).

Grammar

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 iakwe and io̧kwe.

Spelling

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.

am Ailiñ im kajur im aibuijuij indrio, Amen.

External links

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.

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