Mokilese language

Mokilesian
Spoken in	Micronesia , Mokilatoll , Pohnpei Islands
speaker	about 1500
Linguistic ; classification	Austronesian Malayo Polynesian Oceanic Micronesian Nuclear Micronesian Turkish languages Ponapeic languages; ; ; ; ; Mokilese language ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mkj

The Mokilesian language is a Micronesian language spoken in Micronesia . It comes from the Mokilatoll. It is spoken by 1500 people, only 500 of them live on the Mokilatoll.

history

Mokilese comes from Mokilatoll, but most speakers left it to the west to the Pohnpei Islands and parts of the USA . Both islands are part of the Caroline Islands north of Papua New Guinea . The islands changed hands several times. Spaniards, Germans, Japanese and Americans ruled the islands before it became part of Micronesia.

population

Mokilese is spoken by 1500 speakers. The majority, 1050, live in Micronesia. The rest are scattered across the United States (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2013).

Classification

Mokilese is part of the Austronesian language family. Mokilesian has roughly 79% in common with Pingelapeian and 75% with the Pohnapeian language (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2013).

Loanwords

Words borrowed from Spanish before World War II :

'' pwohla '' - bola - ball
'' mihsa '' - misa - mass (religious)

Words borrowed from German before World War II:

'' dois '' - Germany
'' mahk '' - Mark (currency)

Words borrowed from English before World War II:

'' sehpil '' - table - table
'' jip '' - ship
'' kepden '' - captain - captain, captain
'' ama '' - hammer - hammer
'' pilahwa '' - flour, bread - flour, bread
'' roam '' - rum - rum
'' ju '' - shoe - shoe
'' ehl '' - Hell - Hell
'' krihn '' - green - green
'' inj '' - inch - inch
'' dainj '' - dance - dance

Words adopted from English after World War II:

'' delpwohn '' - telephone - telephone
'' kias '' - gasoline - petrol
'' klohraks '' - bleach - bleach
'' kirajiweid '' - graduate graduate
'' koangkiris '' - congress - congress

materials

There is hardly any documentation about this language. A lexicon exists (Harrison & Albert, 1977) and a grammar (Harrison & Albert, 1976). The sources of these books were collected in the 1960s and the language is constantly changing. There are no TV channels or radio broadcasts in this language.

threat

Mokilesian is an endangered language. The number of speakers decreases with each generation. The younger generation prefers to learn Pohnpeian and English. There isn't a single school that teaches this language (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2013).

swell

Encyclopædia Britannica. (2014). Caroline Islands (archipelago, Pacific Ocean) - Encyclopædia Britannica. http://www.barkica.com/EBchecked/topic/96488/Caroline-Islands
Harrison, SP, & Albert, SY (1976). Mokilese Reference Grammar. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
Harrison, SP, & Albert, SY (1977). Mokilese-English Dictionary. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
Hezel, FX (1992). The Expensive Taste for Modernity: Caroline and Marshall Islands. from Micronesian Seminar: http://micsem.org/pubs/articles/historical/frames/exptstmodfr.htm
Poll, D. (July 23, 2013). Mokilese language use, status and importance. (KD Harrison, Interviewer) Retrieved February 11, 2014, from http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/4672/samples/8393
Rehg, KL, & Bender, BW (1990). JSTOR: Oceanic Linguistics, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer, Lexical Transfer from Marshallese to Mokilese: A Case of Intra-Micronesian Borrowing 1990), pp. 1-26. Oceanic Linguistics, 29 (1), 1-26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3623202

Web links

A Mokilese Grammar

Individual evidence

^ Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex .: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/ .

[1] Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex .: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/ .