Palauan language Totally Explained

Everything about Palauan totally explained

| speakers = about 15,000 | fam2 = Malayo-Polynesian (MP) | fam3 = Nuclear MP | fam4 = Sunda-Sulawesi | script = Latin alphabet | nation = | iso2 = pau | iso3 = pau }}
Palauan (also spelled Belauan) is one of the two nationally recognized official languages spoken in the Republic of Palau (the second being English). It is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, and is considered to be one of two languages in Micronesia (the second being Chamorro) belonging to the Western Malayo-Polynesian group, all others considered to be members of either the Micronesian or Polynesian outlier subgroups of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian.

Sounds

The phonemic inventory of Palauan consists of 10 consonants and 6 vowels. Phonetic charts of the vowel and consonant phonemes are provided below, utilizing the .

Vowel Phonemes> Consonant Phonemes> allophones that surface as the result of various phonological processes within the language. The full phonetic inventory of consonants is given below in (the phonemic inventory of vowels, above, is complete).

	ront	entral	ack
Mid	ε	ə	o
	abial	lveolar	elar	lottal
Voiced stops	b	d
Nasals	m		ŋ

Surface Consonants> diphthongs (sequences of vowels within a single syllable). A list of diphthongs and corresponding Palauan words containing them are given below, adapted from .

	abial	nterdental	lveolar	elar
Voiced stops	b		d	g
Voiced fricatives		ð
Liquids			l, ɾ, r

Diphthongs>

IPA	xample	nglish Translation

The extent to which it's accurate to characterize each of these vowel sequences as diphthongs has been a matter of debate, as in,,, . Nevertheless, a number of the sequences above, such as /ui/, clearly behave as diphthongs given their interaction with other aspects of Palauan phonology like stress shift and vowel reduction. Others don't behave as clearly like monosyllabic diphthongs.

Writing System

In the early 1970s, the Palau Orthography Committee worked with linguists from the University of Hawaii to devise a common writing system based on the Latin alphabet. The resulting orthography was largely based on the "one sound/one symbol" notion of the pre-Chomskyan structuralists, yielding an alphabet of ten native Palauan consonants (plus two double consonants), five consonants used exclusively in borrowed words, and five vowels (plus four double vowels). The 20 vowel sequences listed above under the heading Diphthongs are also all officially recognized in the orthography.
On May 10, 2007, the Palauan Senate

passed Bill No. 7-79

, which mandates that educational institutions recognize the Palauan orthography laid out in and . The bill also establishes an Orthography Commission to maintain the language as it develops as well as to oversee and regulate any additions or modifications to the current official orthography.

Native Consonants>

Palauan Letter	PA Pronunciation(s)	xample Word

Foreign Consonants> haibyoo)"sensei)"Papa)"

Palauan Letter	PA Pronunciation(s)	xample Word

Vowels>

Palauan Letter	PA Pronunciation(s)	xample Word

Syntax

Word Order

The word order of Palauan is usually thought to be Verb-Object-Subject (VOS), but this has been a matter of some debate in the linguistic literature. Those who accept the VOS analysis of Palauan word order generally treat Palauan as a pro-drop language with preverbal subject agreement morphemes, final pronominal subjects are deleted (or null).
   Example 1: Ak milenga er a ringngo pro. (means: "I ate the apple.")
   In the preceding example, the null pronoun pro is the subject "I," while the clause-initial ak is the first person singular subject agreement morpheme.
   On the other hand, those who have analyzed Palauan as SVO necessarily reject the pro-drop analysis, instead analyzing the subject agreement morphemes as subject pronouns. In the preceding example, SVO-advocates assume that there's no pro and that the morpheme ak is simply an overt subject pronoun meaning "I." One potential problem with this analysis is that it fails to explain why overt (3rd person) subjects occur clause-finally in the presence of a co-referring 3rd person "subject pronoun" --- treating the subject pronouns as agreement morphemes circumvents this weakness. Consider the following example.
   Example 2: Ng milenga er a ringngo a Alan. (means: "Alan ate the apple.")
   Proponents of the SVO analysis must assume a shifting of the subject a Alan "Alan" from clause-initial to clause-final position, a movement operation that hasn't received acceptance cross-linguistically, but see for discussion.

Palauan Phrases

Some common and useful words and phrases in Palauan are listed below, with their English translations.

Palauan	English
Alii!	Hello!
Ungil tutau.	Good morning.
Ungil sueleb.	Good afternoon.
Ungil kebesengei.	Good evening.
A ngklek a .
Chochoi.	Yes
Ng diak.	No
Adang.	Please.
Sulang.	Thank you.
Ke mo er ker?	Where are you going?
Mechikung.	Goodbye.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Palauan'.

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