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Nauruan
Dorerin Naoe, Ekaiairũ Naoero
Native to	Nauru
Ethnicity	Nauruans
Native speakers	9,356 (2013)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Micronesian Nauruan
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Nauru
Language codes
ISO 639-1	na
ISO 639-2	nau
ISO 639-3	nau
Glottolog	naur1243
ELP	Nauruan
IETF	na-NR
Map showing the distribution of the Micronesian languages; Nauruan-speaking region is shaded purple.
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Nauruan or Nauru (Nauruan: dorerin Naoero) is an Austronesian language, spoken natively in the island country of Nauru. Its relationship to the other Micronesian languages is not well understood.

Phonology

Consonants

Nauruan has 16–17 consonant phonemes. Nauruan makes phonemic contrasts between velarized and palatalized labial consonants. Velarization is not apparent before long back vowels and palatalization is not apparent before non-low front vowels.

Voiceless stops are geminated and nasals also contrast in length. Dental stops /t/ and /d/ become [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively before high front vowels.

The approximants become fricatives in "emphatic pronunciation." Nathan (1974) transcribes them as ⟨j⟩ and ⟨w⟩ but also remarks that they contrast with the non-syllabic allophones of the high vowels. /w/ can also be heard as a fricative [ɣʷ].

Depending on stress, /r/ may be a flap or a trill. The precise phonetic nature of /rʲ/ is unknown. Nathan (1974) transcribes it as ⟨r̵⟩ and speculates that it may pattern like palatalized consonants and be partially devoiced.

Between a vowel and word-final /mˠ/, an epenthetic [b] appears.

Vowels

There are 12 phonemic vowels (six long, six short). In addition to the allophony in the following table from Nathan (1974), a number of vowels reduce to :

Non-open vowels (that is, all but /aa/, /a/, /ɑɑ/ /ɑ/) become non-syllabic when preceding another vowel, as in /e-oeeoun/ → ('hide').

Stress

Stress is on the penultimate syllable when the final syllable ends in a vowel, on the last syllable when it ends in a consonant, and initial with reduplications.

Writing system

In the original writing system for Nauruan, 17 letters were used:

• The five vowels: a, e, i, o, u
• Twelve consonants: b, d, g, j, k, m, n, p, q, r, t, w

The letters c, f, h, l, s, v, x, y, and z were not included. With the growing influence of foreign languages, in particular German, English, Gilbertese, and part of the Pama-Nyungan family, more letters were incorporated into the Nauruan alphabet. In addition, phonetic differences of a few vowels arose, so that umlauts and other similar sounds were indicated with a tilde.

Attempt at language reform of 1938

In 1938, there was an attempt by the Nauruan language committee and Timothy Detudamo to make the language easier to read for Europeans and Americans. It was intended to introduce as many diacritical symbols as possible for the different vowel sounds to state the variety of the Nauruan language in writing. It was decided to introduce only a circumflex accent in the place of the former tilde, so that the characters "õ" and "ũ" were replaced by "ô" and "û". The "ã" was replaced with "e".

Also, "y" was introduced in order to differentiate words with the English "j" (puji). Thus, words like ijeiji were changed to iyeyi. In addition, "ñ" (which represented the velar nasal) was replaced with "ng", to avoid confusion with the Spanish Ñ. "bu" and "qu" were replaced with "bw" and "kw", respectively. "ts" was replaced with "j" (since it represented a sound similar to the English "j"); and the "w" written at the end of words was dropped.

These reforms were only partly carried out: the symbols "õ" and "ũ" are still written as such, with tildes. However, the letters "ã" and "ñ" are now only seldom used, being replaced with "e" and "ng", as prescribed by the reform. Likewise, use of the digraphs "bw" and "kw" has been implemented. Although "j" took the place of "ts", certain spellings still use "ts": e.g., the districts Baiti and Ijuw (according to the reform Beiji and Iyu) are still written with the old writing conventions. The "y" has become generally accepted.

Today the following 30 Latin letters are used.

• Vowels: a, ã, e, i, o, õ, u, ũ
• Consonants: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z

The relationship of the above letters and phonemes is: a , ã , e , i , o , õ , u , ũ , b , bw , c , d , di , f , g , gw , h , j , k , kw , nng , l , m , n , ñ , p , qu , r , s , t , ti , ts , v , w , x , y , z .

Dialects

According to a report published in 1937 in Sydney, Australia, there was a diversity of dialects until Nauru became a colony of Germany in 1888 and the first texts in Nauruan began to be published. The varieties were so divergent that people from different districts often had problems understanding each other completely. With the increasing influence of foreign languages and the rise in the number of Nauruan texts, the dialects blended into a standardized language, which was promoted through dictionaries and translations by Alois Kayser and Philip Delaporte.

Today there is significantly less dialectal variation. In the district of Yaren and the surrounding area there is an eponymous dialect spoken, which is only slightly different from other varieties.

Delaporte's Nauruan dictionary

In 1907, Philip Delaporte published his pocket German-Nauruan dictionary. The dictionary is small (10.5 × 14 cm), with 65 pages devoted to the glossary and an additional dozen to phrases, arranged alphabetically by the German. Approximately 1650 German words are glossed in Nauruan, often by phrases or synonymous forms. There are some 1300 'unique' Nauruan forms in the glosses, including all those occurring in phrases, ignoring diacritical marks. The accents used there are not common; just one accent (the tilde) is in use today.

Sample text

The following example of text is from the Bible (Genesis, 1.1–1.8):

Ñaga ã eitsiõk õrig imin, Gott õrig ianweron me eb. Me eitsiõk erig imin ñana bain eat eb, me eko õañan, mi itũr emek animwet ijited, ma Anin Gott õmakamakur animwet ebõk. Me Gott ũge, Enim eaõ, me eaõen. Me Gott ãt iaõ bwo omo, me Gott õekae iaõ mi itũr. Me Gott eij eget iaõ bwa Aran, me eij eget itũr bwa Anũbũmin. Ma antsiemerin ma antsioran ar eken ũrõr adamonit ibũm. Me Gott ũge, Enim tsimine firmament inimaget ebõk, me enim ekae ebõk atsin eat ebõk. Me Gott eririñ firmament, mõ õ ekae ebõk ñea ijõñin firmament atsin eat ebõk ñea itũgain firmament, mõ ũgan. Me Gott eij egen firmament bwe Ianweron. Ma antsiemerin ma antsioran ar eken ũrõr karabũmit ibũm.

This text demonstrates a few of the German loanwords (e.g. Gott, "God"; and Firmament, "celestial sphere") in Nauruan, which is traced back to the strong influence of German missionaries.

Phrases

References

1. Nauruan at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. Nauruan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
3. Hammarström, Harald; Forke, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2020). "Nauru". Glottolog 4.3.
4. "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: nau". ISO 639-2 Registration Authority - Library of Congress. Retrieved 2017-07-04. Name: Nauru
5. "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: nau". ISO 639-3 Registration Authority - SIL International. Retrieved 2017-07-04. Name: Nauru
6. ^ Nathan (1974:481)
7. ^ Nathan (1974:483)
8. Hughes (2020), p. 15
9. Nathan (1974:481–483)
10. Nathan (1974:481–482)
11. Nathan (1974:482)
12. "Nauruan language and alphabet".

Bibliography

• "Nauru Grammar", by Alois Kayser compiled (1936); distributed by the German embassy 1993, ISBN 0-646-12854-X
• Nathan, Geoffrey S. (1974), "Nauruan in the Austronesian Language Family", Oceanic Linguistics, 12 (1/2), University of Hawai'i Press: 479–501, doi:10.2307/3622864, JSTOR 3622864

Further reading

• Hughes, Kevin (2020). The Synchronic and Diachronic Phonology of Nauruan: Towards a Definitive Classification of an Understudied Micronesian Language (PhD dissertation). City University of New York.

External links

• Nauruan Wiktionary

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Outline Index Category

• Nauruan language
• Languages of Nauru
• Micronesian languages
• Severely endangered languages