ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 31: Nauruan. Nauruan is the official language of the Micron
ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 31: Nauruan. Nauruan is the official language of the Micronesian nation of Nauru. It is spoken by around 6,000 people. Nauruan is generally considered to be in the Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages, itself a limb of the Austronesian language family. It is however an outlier of this group, placed alone on a branch apart from the other Micronesian languages like Gilbertese/Kiribati and Marshallese. Nauruan Bilabial consonants, /b/, /p/, and /m/ all have contrasting palatalized and velarized forms. This means that in addition to their primary place of articulation (bilabial, with both lips) their is also a secondary motion of the tongue either against the hard palate (palatalization) or the soft palate (velarization). Palatalization normally makes sounds appear to be followed by a “y” sound (/j/ in IPA). Most American would recognize this from Russian words like “nyet”, meaning no, which features a palatized /n/. Most Americans probably aren’t as familiar with the effects of velarization, which are generally more subtle. If you’re curious, simply you tube it for examples. Incidentally, Irish Gaelic makes this same contrast. Thank you all for keeping up with these for a whole month! When I started doing these I thought it would be mostly for my benefit, I didn’t really expect people to be interested. Y'all have proved me wrong in spectacular fashion, and it gives me energy to keep it up! Here’s to another month in language! -- source link