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 native speakers living in Pohnpei and its outlying atolls and islands with another 10,000-15,000 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.
Classification
Pohnpeian is most closely related to the Chuukic languages of Chuuk. 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:
- , meaning "frog", borrowed from the Japanese,
- , meaning "baseball", borrowed from the Japanese,
- , meaning "to win", borrowed from the Spanish
- , meaning "boat", borrowed from the English
- , meaning "to draw or paint a picture", borrowed from the German
Phonology
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:
| Bilabial | Dental/ Alveolar | Laminal | Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar | |
| Nasal | ||||||
| Plosive | ||||||
| Fricative | ||||||
| Approximant | ||||||
| Trill/Flap |
Phonotactics
Pohnpeian phonotactics generally allow syllables consisting of consonants and vowels accordingly: V, VC, CV, CVC. This basic system is complicated by Pohnpeian orthographical conventions and phonological processes. Orthographically, is used to represent, though it is often unwritten; -u is realized as ; and indicates a long vowel. Thus, sahu is pronounced, never. Consecutive vowels are glided with or, depending on the relative height and order of the vowels:- diar is said
- toai is said
- suwed is said
- lou is said
Words beginning in nasal consonant clusters may be pronounced as written, or with a leading prothetic vowel. The roundedness of the prothetic vowel depends on that of the adjacent consonant cluster and the first written syllable. For example:
- nta can be said
- ngkapwan may be
- mpwer is optionally
- ngkopw may be
Substitution and assimilation
Further phonological constraints frequently impact the pronunciation and spelling of consonant clusters, triggered variously by reduplication and assimilation into neighboring sounds. Sound changes, especially in reduplication, are often reflected by a change in spelling. However, processes triggered by affixes as well as adjacent words are not indicated in spelling. In order to inflect, derive, and pronounce Pohnpeian words properly, the order of operations must generally begin with liquid assimilation, followed by nasal assimilation, and end with nasal substitution.First, liquid assimilation is seen most often in reduplication alongside spelling changes. By this process, liquids and are assimilated into the following alveolar consonant: nur > nunnur.
The second process, nasal assimilation, presents two varieties: partial and complete. In partial nasal assimilation, assimilates with a following stop consonant to produce,,,, or. For example, the prefix nan- produces:
- nanpar, pronounced
- nanpwungara, pronounced
- nankep, pronounced
In complete nasal assimilation, assimilates into adjacent liquid consonants to produce or : lin + linenek > lillinenek ; nanrek is said . Complete nasal assimilation also occurs across word boundaries: pahn lingan is said .
The third process, nasal substitution, also presents two varieties. Both varieties of nasal substitution affect adjacent consonants of the same type: alveolar, bilabial, or velar. The first variety is often triggered by reduplication, resulting in spelling changes: sel is reduplicated to sensel.
The second variety of nasal substitution, limited to bilabial and velar consonants, occurs across word and morpheme boundaries:
- kalap pahn is pronounced as if it were kalam pahn
- Soulik kin soupisek is pronounced as if it were souling kin soupisek
| -s | -d | -t | -n | -l | -r | |
| s- | ns | — | — | — | sVl | sVr |
| d- | dVs | nd | — | dVn | dVl | — |
| t- | tVs | — | nt | tVn | tVl | tVr |
| n- | ns | nd | nt | nn | ll | — |
| l- | ns | nd | nt | — | ll | — |
| r- | ns | nd | nt | nn | ll | rr |
| -p | -pw | -m | -mw | |
| p- | mp | |||
| pw- | mpw | mmw | ||
| m- | mm | |||
| mw- |
| -k | -ng | |
| k- | ngk | |
| ng- | ngk | ngng |
By following the order of operations, reduplication of the word sel progresses thus: *selsel > *sessel > sensel. In this case, the same result is achieved by nasal substitution alone.
| Proto Oceanic | Proto Micronesian | Proto Chuukic-Pohnpeic | Proto Pohnpeic | Pohnpeian |
| *mp | *p | *p | *p | p |
| *mp,ŋp | *pʷ | *pʷ | *pʷ | pʷ |
| *p | *f | *f | *p, ∅ | p, ∅ |
| *m | *m | *m | *m | m |
| *m,ŋm | *mʷ | *mʷ | *mʷ | mʷ |
| *k | *k | *k | *k | k |
| *ŋk | *x | *∅,r | *∅,r | ∅,r |
| *ŋ | *ŋ | *ŋ | *ŋ | ŋ |
| *y | *y | *y | *y | ∅,y |
| *w | *w | *w | *w | w |
| *t | *t | *t | *j,∅ | s,∅ |
| *T | *j | *j | s | |
| *s,nj | *s | *t | *t | t̻ |
| *ns,j | *S | *t | *t | t̻ |
| *j | *Z | ∅ | *∅ | ∅ |
| *nt,nd | *c | *c | * c | t̺ |
| *d,R | *r | *r | *r | r |
| *l | *l | *l | *l | l |
| *n | *n | *n | *n | n |
| *ɲ | *ɲ | *ɲ | *∅,n | ∅,n |
Grammar
Pohnpeian word order is nominally SVO. Depending on the grammatical function, the head may come before or after its dependents. Like many Austronesian languages, Pohnpeian focus marking interacts with transitivity and relative clauses. Its range of grammatically acceptable sentence structures is more generally noun phrase, verb phrase other noun phrases, where the contents of the leading noun phrase may vary according to the speaker's focus. If the leading noun phrase is not the subject, it is followed by the focus particle me. Normally, the object phrase is last among predicates:| Focus | Pohnpeian |
| Neutral | |
| Subject | |
| Object | |
| Noun phrase |
Honorific speech
speech is used in several settings as a way of showing honor and respect to older ones, those who have been assigned titles, royalty, and in almost all religious settings. Depending on the second or third person, a given sentence may vary widely because honorific speech comprises a separate vocabulary, including all parts of speech and topics both lofty and mundane. Examples include:- pohnkoiohlap
- likena
- pahnkupwur
- pahnpwoal
- dauso
- kelipa
- kaluhlu
- keipweni