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The language of Chuuk belongs to the enormous Malayo-Polynesian
family, one of the major branches of the Austronesian Language
phylum. The other major branches are only found on Taiwan,
whereas the Malayo-Polynesian branches consist of languages that
are distributed all through the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Malaysia, and Madagascar. The geographic location
of the ancestral language of the Austronesian phylum appears to
have been Fijian province in southeastern mainland China. This
may also have been the region from which the language ancestral
to the Malayo-Polynesian branch subsequently spread, as well.
Possibly more distantly related languages may include those in
the Tai-Kadai language phylum and, perhaps even those in the
Austroasiatic phylum.
Chuukese falls within the Nuclear Micronesian subdivision of the
Oceanic Division of the Austronesian language phylum. This
subdivision consists of Kiribati, Marshallese, Kosraen, Nauruan,
and the Pohnpeic and Chuukic Language groups. The Pohnpeic group
consists of dialects spoken on Pohnpie, Mwoakiloa, Pingelap, and
Sapwuahfik. Languages in the Chuukic group are closely related
and extend over most of the Caroline Islands, from the Mortlock
Islands southeast of Chuuk to the atolls in the vicinity of Yap
and Palau in the west. Languages (or dialects) in this group are
Mortlockese, Chuukese, Puluwatese, Saipan Carolinian, Satawalese,
Woleaian, Ulithian, Sonsorolese, and the new extinct language
spoken until late in the last century in the little atoll of
Mapia.
Linguistic affiliations suggest that the ancestors of the
speakers of Nuclear Micronesian Languages settled somewhere in
the eastern part of Micronesia between three and four thousand
years ago. The oldest archaeological site found so far comes
from Bikini Atoll in the Marshall islands, radiocarbon dated to
1960-1665 BC. People gradually spread out from there, southward
into the Gilbert Islands and westward through the Central
Caroline Islands. Once the islands were settled, there continued
to be population movements within them. These movements were
undertaken almost entirely by the atoll dwellers, who maintained
and further developed seafaring lore, such lore not having been
kept up by inhabitants of the high islands. Modern Chuukese
shows evidence of borrowing from other languages closely related
to it, the kind of thing we would expect if there had been
significant internal movements of people in the Caroline Islands
since the time they were first settled. There have always been
links to places further away. Central Carolinians have left
evidence of their presence in the islands of the Northern
Melanesia to the south. They have traded for at least several
centuries with Guam to the north. They have even had occasional
contact with Philippine Islands, a contact that some time in
past introduced loom weaving to the Caroline Islands. Although
Chuuk’s people were not, themselves, active overseas voyagers,
their location in the vast chain of atolls included them in its
trading network.
Chuukese has the unusual feature of permitting word-initial
geminate (double) consonants.
The common ancestor of Western Micronesian languages is believed
to have had this feature,
but most of its modern descendants have lost it.
© Chuuk Historic Preservation
Office -
Small Pond Hosting - 2006
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