Marshallese ( or ), also known as Ebon, is a Micronesian language spoken in the Marshall Islands. The language of the Marshallese people, it is spoken by nearly all of the country's population of 59,000, making it the principal language. There are also roughly 27,000 Marshallese citizens residing in the United States, nearly all of whom speak Marshallese, as well as residents in other countries such as Nauru and Kiribati.
There are two major dialects, the western Rālik and the eastern Ratak.
Classification Marshallese, a Micronesian language, is a member of the Eastern Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian languages. The closest linguistic relatives of Marshallese are the other Micronesian languages, including Gilbertese, Nauruan, Pohnpeian, Mokilese, Chuukese, Refaluwasch, and Kosraean. Marshallese shows 50% lexical similarity with Gilbertese, Mokilese, and Pohnpeian.
Within the Micronesian archipelago, Marshallese—along with the rest of the Micronesian language group—is not as closely related to the more ambiguously classified Oceanic language Yapese in Yap State, or to the Polynesian outlier languages Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro in Pohnpei State, and even less closely related to the non-Oceanic languages Palauan in Palau and Chamorro in the Mariana Islands.
Variation The Republic of the Marshall Islands contains 34 atolls that are split into two chains, the eastern Ratak Chain and the western Rālik Chain. These two chains have different dialects, which differ mainly lexically, and are mutually intelligible. The atoll of Ujelang in the west was reported to have "slightly less homogeneous speech", but it has been uninhabited since 1980.
The Ratak and Rālik dialects differ phonetically in how they deal with stems that begin with double consonants. Ratak Marshallese inserts a vowel to separate the consonants, while Rālik adds a vowel before the consonants (and pronounced an unwritten consonant phoneme before the vowel). For example, the stem 'play' becomes in Rālik Marshallese and in Ratak Marshallese.MED:
Status
Marshallese is the official language of the Marshall Islands and enjoys vigorous use. As of 1979, the language was spoken by 43,900 people in the Marshall Islands. In 2020, the number was closer to 59,000. Additional groups of speakers in other countries including Nauru and the United States increase the total number of Marshallese speakers, with approximately 27,000 Marshallese-Americans living in the United States. Along with Pohnpeian and Chuukese, Marshallese stands out among Micronesian languages in having tens of thousands of speakers; most Micronesian languages have far fewer. A dictionary and at least two Bible translations have been published in Marshallese.
Phonology
Consonants Marshallese has a large consonant inventory, and each consonant has some type of secondary articulation (palatalization, velarization, or rounding). The palatalized consonants are regarded as "light", and the velarized and rounded consonants are regarded as "heavy", with the rounded consonants being both velarized and labialized. (This contrast is similar to that between "slender" and "broad" consonants in Goidelic languages, or between "soft" and "hard" consonants in Slavic languages.) The "light" consonants are considered more relaxed articulations. +Consonant phonemes of MarshalleseLabialCoronalDorsalLightHeavyLightHeavyHeavyPlosiveNasalTrillLateralGlide() Although Marshallese has no voicing contrast in consonants, stops may be allophonically partially voiced (, , ), when they are between vowels and not geminated. (Technically, partially voiced stops would be , , , but this article uses voiced transcriptions , , for simplicity.) Final consonants are often unreleased.
Glides vanish in many environments, with surrounding vowels assimilating their backness and roundedness. That is motivated by the limited surface distribution of these phonemes as well as other evidence that backness and roundedness are not specified phonemically for Marshallese vowels. In fact, the consonant never surfaces phonetically but is used to explain the preceding phenomenon. ( and may surface phonetically in word-initial and word-final positions and, even then, not consistently.)
Bender (1968) explains that it was once assumed that there were six bilabial consonants because of observed surface realizations, , but he determined that two of these, , were actually allophones of respectively before front vowels and allophones of respectively before back vowels. Before front vowels, the velarized labial consonants actually tend to have rounded (labiovelarized) articulations , but they remain unrounded on the phonemic level, and there are no distinct phonemes. The pronunciation guide used by Naan (2014) still recognizes as allophone symbols separate from in these same conditions while recognizing that there are only palatalized and velarized phonemes. This article uses in phonetic transcriptions.
The consonant may be phonetically realized as , , , , , , or (or any of their voiced variants , , , , , , or ), in free variation. Word-internally it usually assumes a voiced fricative articulation as (or or ) but not when geminated. is used to adapt foreign sibilants into Marshallese. In phonetic transcription, this article uses and as voiceless and voiced allophones of the same phoneme.
Marshallese has no distinct phoneme.
The dorsal consonants are usually velar but with the tongue a little farther back , making them somewhere between velar and uvular in articulation. All dorsal phonemes are "heavy" (velarized or rounded), and none are "light" (palatalized). As stated before, the palatal consonant articulations , , and are treated as allophones of the palatalized coronal obstruent , even though palatal consonants are physically dorsal. For simplicity, this article uses unmarked in phonetic transcription.
Bender (1969) describes and as being "dark" r-colored, but is not more specific. The Marshallese-English Dictionary (MED) describes these as heavy dental nasals.
Consonants , and are all coronal consonants and full trills. is similar to Spanish with a trill position just behind the alveolar ridge, a postalveolar trill , but is a palatalized dental trill , articulated further forward behind the front teeth. The MED and Willson (2003) describe the rhotic consonants as "retroflex", but are not clear how this relates to their dental or alveolar trill positions. (See retroflex trill.) This article uses , and in phonetic transcription.
The heavy lateral consonants and are dark l like in English feel, articulated and respectively. This article uses and in phonetic transcription.
The velarized consonants (and, by extension, the rounded consonants) may be velarized or pharyngealized like the emphatic consonants in Arabic or Mizrahi Hebrew.
Vowels Marshallese has a vertical vowel system of just four vowel phonemes, each with several allophones depending on the surrounding consonants.
On the phonemic level, while Bender (1969) and Choi (1992) agree that the vowel phonemes are distinguished by height, they describe the abstract nature of these phonemes differently, with Bender treating the front unrounded surface realizations as their relaxed state that becomes altered by proximity of velarized or rounded consonants, while Choi uses central vowel symbols in a neutral fashion to notate the abstract phonemes and completely different front, back and rounded vowel symbols for surface realizations. Bender (1968, 1969), MED (1976) and Willson (2003) recognize four vowel phonemes, but Choi (1992) observes only three of the phonemes as having a stable quality, but theorizes that there may be a historical process of reduction from four to three, and otherwise ignores the fourth phoneme. For phonemic transcription of vowels, this article recognizes four phonemes and uses the front unrounded vowel notation of the MED, following the approach of Bender (1969) in treating the front vowel surface realizations as the representative phonemes.
On the phonetic level, Bender (1968), MED (1976), Choi (1992), Willson (2003) and Naan (2014) notate some Marshallese vowel surface realizations differently from one another, and they disagree on how to characterize the vowel heights of the underlying phonemes, with Willson (2003) taking the most divergent approach in treating the four heights as actually two heights each with the added presence (+ATR) or absence (-ATR) of advanced tongue root. Bender (1968) assigns central vowel symbols for the surface realizations that neighbor velarized consonants, but the MED (1976), Choi (1992) and Willson (2003) largely assign back unrounded vowel symbols for these, with the exception that the MED uses rather than cardinal for the close-mid back unrounded vowel, and Choi (1992) and Willson (2003) use rather than cardinal for the open back unrounded vowel. Naan (2014) is the only reference providing a vowel trapezium for its own vowels, and differs especially from the other vowel models in splitting the front allophones of into two realizations ( before consonants and in open syllables), merging the front allophones of and as before consonants and in open syllables, merging the rounded allophones of and as , and indicating the front allophone of as a close-mid central unrounded vowel , a realization more raised even than the front allophone of the normally higher . For phonetic notation of vowel surface realizations, this article largely uses the MED's notation, but uses only cardinal symbols for back unrounded vowels.
+Marshallese vowel phonemes and surface realizations Bender MED Choi Willson Naan Height Unrnd. Rnd. Height Phon. Unrnd. Rnd. Height Phon. Unrnd. Rnd. Height Unrnd. Rnd. Unrnd. Rnd. Frt. Back Frt. Back Frt. Back Frt. Back Frt. Back Close Close Close // [,] Close-mid Mid [,] Mid Mid // Open Open Open //
Superficially, 12 Marshallese vowel allophones appear in minimal pairs, a common test for phonemicity. For example, (, 'breadfruit'), (, 'but'), and (, 'taboo') are separate Marshallese words. However, the uneven distribution of glide phonemes suggests that they underlyingly end with the glides (thus , , ). When glides are taken into account, it emerges that there are only 4 vowel phonemes.
When a vowel phoneme appears between consonants with different secondary articulations, the vowel often surfaces as a smooth transition from one vowel allophone to the other. For example, 'shy', phonemically , is often realized phonetically as . It follows that there are 24 possible short diphthongs in Marshallese:
Phoneme