Woleaian language

Woleaian
Spoken in	Federated States of Micronesia
Region	Woleai
Native speakers	1,630 (1987 Yap census)  (date missing)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Central-Eastern Micronesian Micronesian Proper Nuclear Micronesian Trukic Ulithian-Woleaian Woleaian
Writing system	Latin, formerly Woleaian syllabary
Official status
Official language in	Federated States of Micronesia
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-3	woe

Woleaian is the main language of the island of Woleai and surrounding smaller islands in the state of Yap of the Federated States of Micronesia. Woleaian is a Trukic language, and within that family its closest relative is Satawalese, with which it is largely mutually intelligible. Woleaian is divided into two dialects: Woleaian proper and Lamotrek. There are approximately 1700 speakers of Woleaian.

Woleai has a writing system of its own, a syllabary influenced in part by Latin letters.

Phonology

Woleaian has geminate (long) consonants and vowels.

In the orthography of Sohn (1975), along with a few approximations in the IPA, the inventory is,

Consonants

short oral consonant	b [ɸʷ]	p	f	t	s	l	sh [ʃ]	r	g [x]
equivalent geminate	bb [pːʷ]	pp	ff	tt	ss	nn [nː]	ch [tʃ]		k [kː]
nasal consonant	mw [mʷ]	m		n					ng [ŋ]
semivowel	w					y [j]

Note that both sh and r become ch when long, and that l becomes nn.

Vowels occur long and short, except for eo and oa, which are only found long.

Vowels

i	iu [y]	u
e	eo [øː]	o
	a	oa [ɑː]

Further reading

Sohn, H.M. 1975. Woleaian Reference Grammar. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824803566

External links

• Woleaian language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
• Woleaian in the World Atlas of Language Structures Online