Marshallese language
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The Marshallese language (Marshallese: Kajin M̧ajeļ) or Ebon is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands.
| Marshallese (Kajin M̧ajeļ) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Marshall Islands, Nauru |
| Total speakers: | 43,900 (as of 1979) |
| Ranking: | Not in top 100 |
| Genetic classification: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Marshall Islands (with English) |
| Regulated by: | — |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | mh |
| ISO 639-2 | mah |
| SIL | MZM |
Marshallese underwent a change of orthography in recent times. It is written in a form of the latin script with some very unusual diacritic combinations.
Here is the (current) alphabet:
- A Ā B D E I J K L Ļ M M̧ N Ņ N̄ O O̧ Ō P R T U Ū W
- A ā b d e I j k l ļ m m̧ n ņ n̄ o o̧ ō p r t u ū w
Here is the Hail Mary in Marshallese Unicode. Compare with this scanned image (http://www.udayton.edu/mary/images/marshall.jpg) 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.
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 lakwe and io̧kwe.
External links
- Marshallese Phrasebook on the website for the Republic of Marshall Islands (http://www.rmiembassyus.org/tourism/phrasebook.html) lists the Marshallese word for the Marshallese language as kajin Majöl
- Peace Corps Marshall Islands Marshallese Language Training Manual (http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~rscook/pdf/PCMLT-JejeinM.pdf) (PDF, 275 KB; instead of macrons uses trema on vowels and tilde on n, and underlines instead of cedillas)
- Everything2 page on Marshallese (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=918957)
- Ethnologue report on Marshallese (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=MZM)
- Marshallese (http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/search/detailedlanguagerecord?ethnocode=MZM) in the Rosetta Project
- Marshallese Spelling Reforms (http://faroutliers.blogspot.com/2004/08/marshallese-spelling-reforms.html) article in the blog, "Far Outliers"
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