South Marquesan language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

South Marquesan ‘E‘o ‘Enana
Spoken in:	Southern Marquesas Islands, Tahiti
Total speakers:	~5,000
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             Central Eastern              Marquesic               South Marquesan
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	map
ISO 639-3:	mqm
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

South Marquesan is the Marquesic, East Central Polynesian language spoken in the southern Marquesas Islands, as well as on Ua Huka in the northern Marquesas.

The three most noticeable differences between it and North Marquesan are its preference for /n/, /f/ and /ʔ/ (glottal stop) in some cases where North Marquesan uses /k/, /h/ and /k/.

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))

Even the name of the island Ua Huka is, in South Marquesan, "Ua Huna".

The dialects fall roughly into four groups:

Pepane: Eastern Hiva `Oa

Fatu Hiva

Nuku: Western Hiva `Oa and Tahuata

Ua Huka, spoken on that island, and closely related to those of eastern Hiva Oa