Marquesan languages
The marque Saxon languages (English. Marquesic languages ; also: Marquesas group ) are a subgroup of the Polynesian languages within the large Austronesian language family . The language group with a total of 8,500 speakers comprises three individual languages (the language codes according to ISO 639-3 are given in square brackets ):
- Hawaiian [haw] (1,000 speakers)
- Mangareva [mrv] (2,000)
- Marquesan ; Dialects: North [mrq] (3,400), South [mqm] (2,100)
Hawaiian is spoken in Hawaii ( USA ), the other two languages in French Polynesia (on Mangareva and the Marquesas Islands ). Some researchers consider North and South Marquesan to be two distinct languages.
Note the distinction between Marques ic (language group) and Marques an (individual language) in English.
Studies on the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database based (University of Auckland, New Zealand), but suggest that the Hawaiian in the Tahitian group (Engl. Tahitic ) is classified. However, these studies are based exclusively on vocabulary data and can be misled by preserved or borrowed lexemes: there are several indications that Hawaii continued to be in contact with more southern Polynesians even after the initial settlement and was not isolated. Historians such as Patrick Vinton Kirch suggest that Hawaii was first settled from the Marquesas, but that later influences came from Tahiti until around 1300 .