Yapese is a language spoken by the people on the

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An isla ...

of Yap (

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 ...

). It belongs to the Austronesian languages, more specifically to the Oceanic branch of that family. It has been difficult to classify it further, but Yapese may prove to be one of the Admiralty Islands languages.

Orthography

Written Yapese uses

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

. In Yapese spelling as practiced until the 1970s, the glottal stop was not written with an explicit character. A word-final glottal stop was represented by doubling the final vowel letter.

Glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...

of consonants was represented with an apostrophe. In the 1970s an orthography was created which uses double vowel letters to represent long vowels; and because of the ambiguity that would occur if the glottal stop was not written, the glottal stop was written with the letter ''q''. This new orthography using the letter ''q'' is not in universal use, but many works and maps about Yap write place names using the new q-orthography.

Phonology

Apart from a couple grammatical forms which are V, syllables are CV or CVC.

Consonants

Yapese is one of the relatively few languages in the world with ejective

fricative A fricative is a consonant 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 ...

s. The Yapese ejective consonants are . There are also glottalised nasals and approximants . In the table below, each

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

is listed to the left of the

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemi ...

that represents it in Yapese orthography. and only occur in English and Japanese loans ( does occur in native words, however).

Vowels

In the table below, each phoneme is listed to the left of the grapheme that represents it in Yapese orthography.

Grammar

Morphology

Reduplication

Yapese makes use of

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 ...

for several morphological functions, including deriving stative adjectives from inchoative adjectives, as in (1a–b), as well as to make

diminutives A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A ( abbreviated ) is a word-form ...

of verbs, as in (2a-b):

Pronouns

Yapese distinguishes between three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and three

persons A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

(first, second, and third), as well as clusivity in its personal pronouns.
Yapese Talking Dictionary
was produced b
Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages

References

Bibliography

*Jensen, John Thayer. 1977. Yapese–English Dictionary. (PALI Language Texts: Micronesia.) Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

External links

Yapese Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database

* Chepin yuu Waqab ('Events on Yap'). Yapese-language vernacular reader * Yaat nu Waqab ('Tales of Yap'). A Yapese-language vernacular reader * Thaaboeg (this title is a man's name). A Yapese-language vernacular reader * Written materials about Yapese plants and animals archived with Kaipuleohone * Index cards of plant and animal names, labeled 'Carolines nimals' and index cards of plant and animal names, labeled 'Carolines lants' * Paradisec has two collections of Arthur Capell's materials
AC1AC2
, which include Yapese language materials * Paradisec ha
an open access collection of Yapese texts and a dictionary
from John Jensen {{Oceania topic, Languages of Yap Oceanic languages Languages of the Federated States of Micronesia