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 Marshallese language - Definition 

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
  Central-Eastern
   Eastern
    Oceanic
     Central-Eastern       Remote        Micronesian         Micronesian Proper          Marshallese

Official status
Official language of: Marshall Islands (with English)
Regulated by:
Language codes
ISO 639-1mh
ISO 639-2 mah
SILMZM



Information on Marshallese is scant but it appears to have had 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;
Iroo ej pād ippam̧.
Kwo jeram̧m̧an iaan kōrā raņ im
ejeram̧m̧an ineen lo̧jiōm̧, Jesus.
O Maria kwojarar, 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

Wikipedia
Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the


de:Marshallische Sprache

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Marshallese language".