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Pohnpeian language
Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands. Pohnpeian has approximately 30,000 (estimated) native speakers living in Pohnpei and its outlying atolls and islands with another 10,000-15,000 (estimated) living off island in parts of the US mainland, Hawaii, and Guam. It is the second-most widely spoken native language of the Federated States of Micronesia the first being Chuukese.
Pohnpeian features a "high language", referred to as Meing or Mahsen en Meing including specialized vocabulary used when speaking to, or about people of high rank.
Pohnpeian is most closely related to the Chuukic languages of Chuuk (formerly Truk). Ngatikese, Pingelapese and Mwokilese of the Pohnpeic languages are closely related languages to Pohnpeian. Pohnpeian shares 81% lexical similarity with Pingelapese, 75% with Mokilese, and 36% with Chuukese.
Pohnpeian employs a great deal of loanwords from colonial languages such as English, Japanese, Spanish, and German. However, these loanwords are neither spelled nor pronounced exactly the same as the source language. Examples of these loanwords include:
The modern Pohnpeian orthography uses twenty letters — sixteen single letters and four digraphs — collated in a unique order:
As German missionaries designed an early form of the orthography, Pohnpeian spelling uses -h to mark a long vowel, rather like German: dohl 'mountain'. The IPA equivalents of written Pohnpeian are as follows:
Pohnpeian phonotactics generally allow syllables consisting of consonants (C) and vowels (V) accordingly: V, VC, CV, CVC. This basic system is complicated by Pohnpeian orthographical conventions and phonological processes. Orthographically, ⟨i⟩ is used to represent /j/, though it is often unwritten; -u is realized as /w/; and ⟨h⟩ indicates a long vowel (a spelling convention inherited from German). Thus, sahu is pronounced [sʲaːw], never [sʲahu]. Consecutive vowels are glided with [j] or [w], depending on the relative height and order of the vowels:
While the glide [j] is never written other than as ⟨i⟩ the glide [w] may be written between ⟨u⟩ and a non-high vowel: suwed ("bad").
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Pohnpeian language
Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands. Pohnpeian has approximately 30,000 (estimated) native speakers living in Pohnpei and its outlying atolls and islands with another 10,000-15,000 (estimated) living off island in parts of the US mainland, Hawaii, and Guam. It is the second-most widely spoken native language of the Federated States of Micronesia the first being Chuukese.
Pohnpeian features a "high language", referred to as Meing or Mahsen en Meing including specialized vocabulary used when speaking to, or about people of high rank.
Pohnpeian is most closely related to the Chuukic languages of Chuuk (formerly Truk). Ngatikese, Pingelapese and Mwokilese of the Pohnpeic languages are closely related languages to Pohnpeian. Pohnpeian shares 81% lexical similarity with Pingelapese, 75% with Mokilese, and 36% with Chuukese.
Pohnpeian employs a great deal of loanwords from colonial languages such as English, Japanese, Spanish, and German. However, these loanwords are neither spelled nor pronounced exactly the same as the source language. Examples of these loanwords include:
The modern Pohnpeian orthography uses twenty letters — sixteen single letters and four digraphs — collated in a unique order:
As German missionaries designed an early form of the orthography, Pohnpeian spelling uses -h to mark a long vowel, rather like German: dohl 'mountain'. The IPA equivalents of written Pohnpeian are as follows:
Pohnpeian phonotactics generally allow syllables consisting of consonants (C) and vowels (V) accordingly: V, VC, CV, CVC. This basic system is complicated by Pohnpeian orthographical conventions and phonological processes. Orthographically, ⟨i⟩ is used to represent /j/, though it is often unwritten; -u is realized as /w/; and ⟨h⟩ indicates a long vowel (a spelling convention inherited from German). Thus, sahu is pronounced [sʲaːw], never [sʲahu]. Consecutive vowels are glided with [j] or [w], depending on the relative height and order of the vowels:
While the glide [j] is never written other than as ⟨i⟩ the glide [w] may be written between ⟨u⟩ and a non-high vowel: suwed ("bad").