The Nukuoro language is a Polynesian Outlier language, spoken by about 1,200 people on

Nukuoro Nukuoro is an atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia. It is a municipality of the state of Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia. It is the secondmost southern atoll of the country, after Kapingamarangi. They both are Polynesian outliers ...

Atoll An atoll () is a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical oceans and seas where corals can gro ...

and on

Pohnpei Pohnpei "upon (''pohn'') a stone altar (''pei'')" (formerly known as Ponape or Ascension, Proto-Chuukic-Pohnpeic: ''*Fawo ni pei)'' is an island of the Senyavin Islands which are part of the larger Caroline Islands group. It belongs to Pohnp ...

, two islands of

Pohnpei State Pohnpei State (IPA: pɔ:n peɪ) is one of the four states of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). The other states are, from east to west, Kosrae State, Chuuk State, and Yap State. The state's main island is Pohnpei. History The pre-colonia ...

within the

Federated States of Micronesia The Federated States of Micronesia (; abbreviated FSM) is an island country in Oceania. It consists of four states from west to east, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosraethat are spread across the western Pacific. Together, the states compr ...

. 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 Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, ...

and in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Most Nukuoro speakers, particularly those that live away from Nukuoro Atoll, are multilingual in Pohnpeian and/or

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

; some older Nukuoro speakers also know

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

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 Polynesian is the adjectival form of Polynesia. It may refer to: * Polynesians, an ethnic group * Polynesian culture, the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia * Polynesian mythology, the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia * Poly ...

, which are spoken by island populations in Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. Nukuoro is most closely related to

Kapingamarangi Kapingamarangi is an atoll and a municipality in the state of Pohnpei of the Federated States of Micronesia. It is by far the most southerly atoll or island of the country and of the Caroline Islands, south of the next southerly atoll, Nukuoro, ...

, the only other Polynesian language found in Micronesia. While the two languages are not mutually intelligible, it is nonetheless possible for a speaker of one language to make themselves understood to a speaker of the other with some difficulty.

Language use and orthography

Population

The primary language spoken on the Nukuoro atoll is Nukuoro. In 1965 there were approximately 400 speakers. 260 of these speakers resided on the atoll, 125 lived on

Ponape Ponape may refer to: * Pohnpei, an island in the Federated States of Micronesia * ''Ponape'' (barque), a German sailing ship {{disambiguation ...

, the District Center, and a few others were spread out on the other islands in the District (Carroll 1965). The current population is estimated to be at about 1000 speakers.

Orthography

The Nukuoro writing system was developed by Chief Leka in the 1920s, perhaps with the assistance of resident Europeans or missionaries in Ponape. It is known and used in some form by nearly all Nukuoro speakers, and has been the educational standard since its creation. The Nukuoro orthography differs from other Polynesian orthographies in that voiceless stop phonemes are written using the letters ''b d g'', a choice that probably stems from the fact that Nukuoro voiceless stops are

unaspirated In linguistics, a tenuis consonant ( or ) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized. In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish ''p, t, ...

like English voiced stops.

Phonology

Vowels

There are 5 vowel qualities in Nukuoro: .

Vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word ...

is contrastive, and long vowels are represented by writing the vowel symbol twice. Long vowels are about twice as long as a short vowel, and are not rearticulated. The phonemic geminate is often realized phonetically as .

Consonants

There are 10

consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

in Nukuoro, each of which is contrastive for length. Geminate consonants are articulated for about twice as long as a singleton consonant, with the exception of stops and taps: geminate stops are articulated with increased aspiration, and geminate taps are articulated as a long, pre-voiced dental or retroflex stop. Geminate consonants are typically found stem-initially, and are often created by reduplication. Like many Polynesian languages, Nukuoro has only three stops in its phonemic inventory: , , and . These stops are unaspirated and can be variably voiced, but are phonemically voiceless. The orthography of Nukuoro represents these voiceless stops with ''b, d, g''. The alveolar tap is represented in Nukuoro orthography using the letter ''l'', although early records of Nukuoro (and in fact, the spelling of the language name itself) use ''r''. Since singleton , , are written with ''b, d, g'', geminate , , are written with ''p, t, k''. Geminated , , , , are represented with double letters (''mm, nn, ss, hh, ll''), and geminated is written as ''nng''.Carroll, 1965, p. 196

Syllable structure

Syllables take the shapes V, VV, VVV, CV, CVV and CVVV. All possible V and VV combinations occur. All possible CV combinations occur except . The first member of a

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

is always the syllabic peak when the syllable is stressed; elsewhere there is little difference between members, the peak of sonority tending to occur on the most naturally sonorous vowel.

Grammar

Reduplication

Reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...

is one of the most productive morphological processes in Nukuoro. Reduplication is most common for adjectives and verbs. There are two types of reduplication in Nukuoro: phoneme reduplication, which doubles the first sound to make a geminate, and full reduplication, which copies the first two syllables. Phoneme reduplication usually differentiates between singular and plural. : Full reduplication indicates that an event happens repeatedly. :

Basic clause structure

The basic

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

in Nukuoro is Subject-Verb-Object, but there are also cases of Verb-Subject-Object. Template for a basic Nukuoro sentence with example: Verbs generally do not show any agreement or inflection, and nouns are not marked morphologically for case. Historically, Nukuoro had an ergative-absolutive alignment, a system retained in many related languages.

Pronouns

Basic pronouns

Nukuoro distinguishes singular, dual, and plural, as well as

inclusive and exclusive we In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...

Genitive pronouns

The genitive pronouns are built off the basic pronoun paradigm. The a/o distinction marks alienability: o marks inalienable possession, and a marks alienable possession. Some genitive pronouns do not mark the a vs. o distinction and are used for both.

Endangerment

Materials

There are few solid resources for the Nukuoro language. The primary and probably most informative one is Vern Carroll's book ''An Outline of the Structure of the Language of Nukuoro''. There is also a Nukuoro Lexicon that has English to Nukuoro and Nukuoro to English, as well as grammar notes. In 2013, Gregory D.S. Anderson and

K. David Harrison K. David Harrison (born 1966) is a Canadian and American linguist, anthropologist, author, filmmaker, and activist for the documentation and preservation of endangered languages. Biography Harrison received his PhD from Yale University as a stu ...

of Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages created th
Nukuoro Talking Dictionary
a digital lexicon that includes sound recordings of Nukuoro words. This lexicon was initially populated with sound recordings from Nukuoro speakers Johnny Rudolph, Maynard Henry, and Kurt Erwin. This dictionary continues to be augmented by speakers and linguists and includes over 1000 audio tokens.

Vitality

Nukuoro is listed as a developing language. Ethnologue states that this means it is in vigorous use but isn't yet widespread. It is being transmitted to children, and is used in schools, government, and daily life. After World War 2, there were already efforts to help preserve the language as the United States set up an elementary school taught completely in Nukuoro. The population of speakers also increased from 400 to 1000 since 1965, which shows positive growth.

References

External links

* 436 index cards of plant and animal names archived with

Kaipuleohone Kaipuleohone is a digital ethnographic archive that houses audio and visual files, photographs, as well as hundreds of textual material such as notes, dictionaries, and transcriptions relating to small and endangered languages. The archive is stored ...

* Nukuoro digital lexical database archived with

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nukuoro Language Ellicean languages Languages of the Federated States of Micronesia Pohnpei Endangered Austronesian languages