Palauan () is a Malayo-Polynesian language native to the Republic of Palau, where it is one of the two official languages, alongside English. It is widely used in day-to-day life in the country. Palauan is not closely related to other Malayo-Polynesian languages and its exact classification within the branch is unclear.
Classification
It is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family of languages, and is one of only two indigenous languages in Micronesia that are not part of the Oceanic sub-branch of that family, the other being Chamorro (see , , , and ).
Roger Blench (2015) argues that based on evidence from fish names, Palauan had early contact with Oceanic languages either directly or indirectly via the Yapese language. These include fish names for the sea eel, yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), left-eye flounder (Bothus mancus), triggerfish, sailfish, barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda), damsel fish (Abudefduf sp.), squirrelfish (Holocentrus spp.), unicorn fish (Naso spp.), trevally, land crab (Cardisoma rotundus), and wrasse. This suggests that Oceanic speakers had influenced the fishing culture of Palau, and had been fishing and trading in the vicinity of Palau for quite some time. Blench (2015) also suggests that the Palauan language displays influence from Central Philippine languages and Samalic languages.
Phonology
The phonemic inventory of Palauan consists of 10 consonants and 6 vowels. Phonetic charts of the vowel and consonant phonemes are provided below, utilizing the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
While the phonemic inventory of Palauan is relatively small, comparatively, many phonemes contain at least two allophones that surface as the result of various phonological processes within the language. The full phonetic inventory of consonants is given below in IPA (the phonemic inventory of vowels, above, is complete).
Diphthongs
Palauan contains several diphthongs (sequences of vowels within a single syllable). A list of diphthongs and corresponding Palauan words containing them are given below, adapted from .
The extent to which it is accurate to characterize each of these vowel sequences as diphthongs has been a matter of debate, as in , , , and . Nevertheless, a number of the sequences above, such as , clearly behave as diphthongs given their interaction with other aspects of Palauan phonology like stress shift and vowel reduction. Others do not behave as clearly like monosyllabic diphthongs.
Writing system
In the early 1970s, the Palau Orthography Committee worked with linguists from the University of Hawaii to devise an alphabet based on the Latin script. The resulting orthography was largely based on the "one phoneme/one symbol" notion, producing an alphabet of twelve native consonants, six consonants for use in loan words, and ten vowels. The 20 vowel sequences listed under Diphthongs are also all officially recognized in the orthography.
Most of the letters/graphemes in written Palauan correspond to phonemes that can be represented by the corresponding segments in the International Phonetic Alphabet , e.g., Palauan b is the phoneme . Three notable exceptions are worth mentioning. The first is ch, which is invariably pronounced as a glottal stop . The ch digraph is a remnant of an earlier writing system developed during German occupation when the glottal stop was pronounced as a fricative . Some older Palauans still remember their grandparents pronouncing ch this way. In modern Palauan usage the sound has been completely replaced by , but the ch spelling persists. The second is e, which represents either the full vowel in primary and secondary stressed syllables, or a schwa in unstressed syllables; the conditions are similar to those of English vowel reduction (stress in Palauan is largely penultimate, with many semi-regular exceptions). The third is the digraph ng, which is a (phonemic) velar nasal but can assimilate to be pronounced as or . There is no phonemic in Palauan. This gap is due to a historical sound shift from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *n to .
On May 10, 2007, the Palauan Senate passed Bill No. 7-79, which mandates that educational institutions recognize the Palauan orthography laid out in and . The bill also establishes an Orthography Commission to maintain the language as it develops as well as to oversee and regulate any additions or modifications to the current official orthography.
Grammar
Pronouns
The following set of pronouns are the pronouns found in the Palauan language: