Marquesan language

Marquesan ; 'Eo' Enana [North Marquesan] ; 'Eo' Enata [South Marquesan]
Spoken in	Marquesas , Tahiti
speaker	~ 11,000
Linguistic ; classification	Austronesian Malayo Polynesian Oceanic Polynesian East Polynesian Marquesan; ; ; ; Marquesan language ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mrq (North Marquesan) ; mqm (South Marquesan)

Marquesan is an east-central Polynesian pluricentric language made up of two dialects of the language group of the Marquesan languages spoken on the Marquesas archipelago in French Polynesia .

Marquesan is divided into a northern dialect (3,400 speakers) on the northern island group and a southern dialect (2,100 speakers) on the southern islands. Some researchers consider the two varieties as separate languages. They are usually divided into two groups, Northern Marquesan and Southern Marquesan , along geographic lines.

The only official language in the Marquesas is French . The native Marquesan language belongs to a subunit of the Austronesian language tribe . Only 5,500 Marquesans are spoken of. More and more Marquesan speakers use French among themselves at home. The language therefore threatens to die out.

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Much of the article content is based on the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Bulletins relating to the Marquesas Islands.
Gabriele H. Cablitz: Marquesan: A Grammar of Space . Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 169. Mouton de Gruyter, 2006.
Grammaire et dictionnaire de la langue des Îles Marquises in: Msgr. Dordillon's Marquesan language dictionary. Société des études océaniennes, Pape'ete, 1904 - new edition 1999.

Web links

Bishop Museum Bulletins
Grammaire et dictionnaire de la langue des Îles Marquises - Marquisien – Français . Institut d'Ethnologie, Paris 1931, PDF; 21.6 MB
Johann Buschmann & Guillaume de Humboldt: Aperçu de la langue des îles Marquises et de la langue taïtienne, accompagné d'un vocabulaire inédit de la langue taïtienne. Berlin 1843.

Individual evidence

↑ Wurm & Hattori 1981, in: Ethnologue 2005.
↑ Sic, for "tahitienne". Historical and geographical introduction by Johann Buschmann, plus a lexicon by Wilhelm von Humboldt .

[1] Wurm & Hattori 1981, in: Ethnologue 2005.

[2] Sic, for "tahitienne". Historical and geographical introduction by Johann Buschmann, plus a lexicon by Wilhelm von Humboldt .