| Mortlockese | |
|---|---|
| Mortlock, Kapsen Mwoshulók, or Nomoi | |
| Native to | Federated States of Micronesia |
| Region | Caroline Islands |
Native speakers | (5,900 cited 1989 census)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mrl |
| Glottolog | mort1237 |
| ELP | Mortlockese |
 Mortlockese is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Mortlockese (Kapsen Mwoshulók), also known as Mortlock or Nomoi,[1] is a language that belongs to the Chuukic group of Micronesian languages in the Federated States of Micronesia spoken primarily in the Mortlock Islands (Nomoi or Lower Mortlock Islands and the Upper Mortlock Islands).[2] It is nearly intelligible with Satawalese, with an 18 percent intelligibility and an 82 percent lexical similarity, and Puluwatese, with a 75 percent intelligibility and an 83 percent lexical similarity.[1] The language today has become mutually intelligible with Chuukese, though marked with a distinct Mortlockese accent.[citation needed] Linguistic patterns show that Mortlockese is converging with Chuukese since Mortlockese now has an 80 to 85 percent lexical similarity.[1][3]
There are approximately five to seven thousand speakers of Mortlockese in the Mortlock Islands, Guam, Hawaii, and the United States. There are at least eleven different dialects that show some sort of correspondence to the Mortlock Island groups.
- ^ a b c d Mortlockese at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ Odango, Emerson. 2015. Afféú Fangani ‘Join Together’: A Morphophonemic Analysis Of Possessive Suffix Paradigms And A Discourse-Based Ethnography Of The Elicitation Session In Pakin Lukunosh Mortlockese. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Ph.D. dissertation.
- ^ Marshall, Mac (2004). Namoluk Beyond the Reef: The Transformation of a Micronesian Community. Westview Press. p. 18. ISBN 9780813341620.
