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| North Marquesan ‘E‘o ‘Kenata |
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| Spoken in: | Northern Marquesas Islands, Tahiti | |
| Total speakers: | ~6,000 | |
| Language family: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Eastern Polynesian Oceanic Central-Eastern Oceanic Remote Oceanic Central Pacific East Fijian-Polynesian Polynesian Nuclear Polynesian Eastern Polynesian Central Eastern Marquesic North Marquesan |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | map | |
| ISO 639-3: | mrq | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
North Marquesan is the Marquesic, East Central Polynesian language spoken in the northern Marquesas Islands.
The three most noticeable differences between it and South Marquesan are its preference for /k/ in some cases where South Marquesan uses /n/ and /ʔ/ (glottal stop) and its complete replacement of the /f/ of South Marquesan with /h/.
This difference can be seen in such pairs as
- North Marquesan <==> South Marquesan
- haka <==> fana (bay)
- ha`e <==> fa`e (house)
- koe <==> `oe (you (singular))
North Marquesan exhibits some particularly interesting characteristics. It alone seems to have taken "the other path" in the simplification of Proto-Polynesian nasalized consonants. Where most Polynesian languages simplified *mb to /m/, North Marquesan has /p/, and where most simplified *nd to /n/, North Marquesan has /t/. While some Polynesian languages maintained the velar nasal /ŋ/, many have lost the distinction between the nasals /ŋ/ and /n/, merging both into /n/. North Marquesan, however, prefers /k/. Another notable feature of North Marquesan is that from it, it appears that Proto-Polynesian had a consonant cluster *kt, or perhaps a palatal stop (as is the case with all comparative and reconstructive linguistics, this is the subject of some debate)... Whatever that cluster or stop might have been, it is realized in every modern Polynesian language as /t/ with the exception of North Marquesan, which uses /k/. Another feature is that, while almost every Polynesian language has dropped /k/ in many positions, replacing it with /ʔ/, North Marquesan has retained it. (Tahitian and Samoan have no /k/ whatsoever, and the /k/ in modern Hawaiian is actually a "new" way of pronouncing what, to this day, is /t/ on Niihau.)
The dialects fall roughly into four groups:
- Tai Pi, spoken in the eastern third of Nuku Hiva, and according to some linguists, a separate language, Tai Pi Marquesan
- Tei`i, spoken in western Nuku Hiva
- Eastern Ua Pu
- Western Ua Pu
Resources
- Marquesan Legends (ISBN B0006W3MXY)
