Nukuoro language

The Nukuoro language is an Ellicean language spoken by about 1,200 people on Nukuoro and Pohnpei—two islands of Pohnpei State within the Federated States of Micronesia. Nukuoro is a remote coral atoll with a population of about 150, where the primary language is Nukuoro. An additional several hundred Nukuoro speakers live in Kolonia, Pohnpei, with smaller diaspora communities elsewhere in Micronesia and in the United States.

Most Nukuoro speakers, especially those living away from Nukuoro Atoll, can speak more than one language. They often use Pohnpeian and/or English. Some older speakers also know German or Japanese. This language is a special part of the culture and history of the people who live on these islands.

Classification

Nukuoro is part of the Polynesian language family, which is a group within the bigger Oceanic family of languages. This family belongs to the even larger Austronesian family. Nukuoro is special because it is one of the Polynesian Outliers. These are Polynesian languages spoken in places like Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. The language Nukuoro is most similar to Kapingamarangi, which is the only other Polynesian language spoken in Micronesia. Although people who speak Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi cannot fully understand each other, they can often share ideas with some difficulty.

Language use and orthography

The main language spoken on Nukuoro atoll is Nukuoro. In 1965, about 400 people spoke it—260 on the atoll and 125 on Ponape. Today, around 1,000 people speak Nukuoro.

Long ago, a leader named Chief Leka created a way to write Nukuoro in the 1920s, maybe with help from people living on Ponape. Almost everyone who speaks Nukuoro knows this writing system, and it has been used in schools since it was made. The Nukuoro way of writing is different from other languages because it uses special letters for sounds.

Phonology

Vowels

Nukuoro has five vowel sounds: /a, e, i, o, u/. These vowels can be short or long. A long vowel is written by repeating the vowel letter and lasts about twice as long as a short vowel.

Consonants

Nukuoro has ten consonant sounds, and each can be short or long. Long consonants are held for about twice as long as short ones. Some long consonants are pronounced with extra breath, and others are spoken as longer sounds.

Like many Polynesian languages, Nukuoro has three main stop sounds: /p/, /t/, and /k/. These sounds are not strongly pronounced with breath but can sometimes sound different depending on how they are spoken. In writing, these sounds are shown with the letters b, d, g. The sound /ɾ/ is written with the letter l, though older records use r.

When a consonant is long, it is written with the same letter twice, such as mm for /m/ and nng for /ŋ/.

Grammar

Reduplication is an important way that words change their meaning in Nukuoro. It is mostly used with adjectives and verbs.

There are two kinds of reduplication in Nukuoro. One kind repeats just the first sound, making a longer version of that sound. This often shows if something is single or many. For example, "bedi" means "fat" for one thing, and "pedi" means "fat" for many things. The other kind repeats the first two sounds of a word, showing that something happens again and again. For example, "galo" means "look," and "galogalo" means "look all around."

Nukuoro usually follows a Subject-Verb-Object order in sentences, like in English. For example, "I put the book on the table" shows this order. Verbs in Nukuoro do not change to match the subject, and nouns do not have special endings to show their role in the sentence.

Nukuoro has different kinds of pronouns for one person, two people, or many people, and for talking about groups that include or exclude the speaker.

The way pronouns show ownership can change depending on whether the thing owned is closely connected to the owner or not.

Aspect markers show how we think about when and how something happens.

Endangerment

There are not many books or tools to help people learn the Nukuoro language. One important book is by Vern Carroll, called An Outline of the Structure of the Language of Nukuoro. There is also a dictionary that helps people translate between English and Nukuoro, with notes about grammar.

In 2013, two experts made a special online dictionary called the Nukuoro Talking Dictionary. It includes recordings of Nukuoro words spoken by real speakers. This dictionary keeps growing with more words and sounds added by speakers and language experts.

Nukuoro is considered a developing language, which means it is being used a lot and is growing. It is taught to children in schools and used in everyday life. After World War II, people worked hard to keep the language alive by starting schools where Nukuoro was the main language taught. The number of people who speak Nukuoro has also grown from 400 to 1000 since 1965, showing that the language is doing well.