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Nauruan language
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Nauruan language
Nauruan or Nauru (Nauruan: dorerin Naoero) is an Austronesian language, spoken natively in the island country of Nauru.
According to a report published in 1937 in Sydney, Australia, there was a diversity of dialects until Nauru became a colony of Germany in 1888 and the first texts in Nauruan began to be published. The varieties were so divergent that people from different districts often had problems understanding each other completely. With the increasing influence of foreign languages and the rise in the number of Nauruan texts, the dialects blended into a standardized language, which was promoted through dictionaries and translations by Alois Kayser and Philip Delaporte.
Today there is significantly less dialectal variation. In the district of Yaren and the surrounding area there is an eponymous dialect spoken, which is only slightly different from other varieties.
Nauruan has 16–17 consonant phonemes. Nauruan makes phonemic contrasts between velarized and palatalized labial consonants. Velarization is not apparent before long back vowels and palatalization is not apparent before non-low front vowels.
Voiceless stops are geminated and nasals also contrast in length. Dental stops /t/ and /d/ become [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively before high front vowels.
The approximants become fricatives in "emphatic pronunciation". Nathan (1974) transcribes them as ⟨j⟩ and ⟨w⟩ but also remarks that they contrast with the non-syllabic allophones of the high vowels. /w/ can also be heard as a fricative [ɣʷ].
Depending on stress, /r/ may be a flap or a trill. The precise phonetic nature of /rʲ/ is unknown. Nathan (1974) transcribes it as ⟨r̵⟩ and speculates that it may pattern like palatalized consonants and be partially devoiced.
Between a vowel and word-final /mˠ/, an epenthetic [b] appears.
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Nauruan language
Nauruan or Nauru (Nauruan: dorerin Naoero) is an Austronesian language, spoken natively in the island country of Nauru.
According to a report published in 1937 in Sydney, Australia, there was a diversity of dialects until Nauru became a colony of Germany in 1888 and the first texts in Nauruan began to be published. The varieties were so divergent that people from different districts often had problems understanding each other completely. With the increasing influence of foreign languages and the rise in the number of Nauruan texts, the dialects blended into a standardized language, which was promoted through dictionaries and translations by Alois Kayser and Philip Delaporte.
Today there is significantly less dialectal variation. In the district of Yaren and the surrounding area there is an eponymous dialect spoken, which is only slightly different from other varieties.
Nauruan has 16–17 consonant phonemes. Nauruan makes phonemic contrasts between velarized and palatalized labial consonants. Velarization is not apparent before long back vowels and palatalization is not apparent before non-low front vowels.
Voiceless stops are geminated and nasals also contrast in length. Dental stops /t/ and /d/ become [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively before high front vowels.
The approximants become fricatives in "emphatic pronunciation". Nathan (1974) transcribes them as ⟨j⟩ and ⟨w⟩ but also remarks that they contrast with the non-syllabic allophones of the high vowels. /w/ can also be heard as a fricative [ɣʷ].
Depending on stress, /r/ may be a flap or a trill. The precise phonetic nature of /rʲ/ is unknown. Nathan (1974) transcribes it as ⟨r̵⟩ and speculates that it may pattern like palatalized consonants and be partially devoiced.
Between a vowel and word-final /mˠ/, an epenthetic [b] appears.
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