The Marshallese language (Marshallese: Kajin M̧ajeļ) or Ebon is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands.

Marshallese (Kajin M̧ajeļ)
Spoken in:	Marshall Islands, Nauru
Total speakers:	43,900 (as of 1979)
Ranking:	Not in top 100
Genetic classification:	Austronesian  Malayo-Polynesian   Central-Eastern    Eastern     Oceanic      Central-Eastern       Remote        Micronesian         Micronesian Proper          Marshallese
Official status
Official language of:	Marshall Islands (with English)
Regulated by:	—
Language codes
ISO 639-1	mh
ISO 639-2	mah
SIL	MZM

Information on Marshallese is scant but it appears to have had a change of orthography in recent times. It is written in a form of the latin script with some very unusual diacritic combinations.

Here is the (current) alphabet:

A Ā B D E I J K L Ļ M M̧ N Ņ N̄ O O̧ Ō P R T U Ū W

A ā b d e I j k l ļ m m̧ n ņ n̄ o o̧ ō p r t u ū w

Here is the Hail Mary in Marshallese Unicode. Compare with this scanned image to see how it should look with all the diacritics in place.

Io̧kwe eok Maria, kwo lōn̄ kōn

menin jouj;

Iroo ej pād ippam̧.

Kwo jeram̧m̧an iaan kōrā raņ im

ejeram̧m̧an ineen lo̧jiōm̧, Jesus.

O Maria kwojarar, jinen Anij,

kwōn jar kōn kem rijjerawiwi.

Kiiō im ilo iien

amwōj mej. Amen.

One Marshallese word is yokwe, which means both hello and good-bye. It also means love. (Compare Hawaiian aloha.) This word may also be written lakwe and io̧kwe.

External links

• Peace Corps Marshall Islands Marshallese Language Training Manual (PDF, 275 KB; instead of macrons uses trema on vowels and tilde on n, and underlines instead of cedillas)
• Everything2 page on Marshallese
• Ethnologue report on Marshallese
• Marshallese in the Rosetta Project
• Marshallese Wikipedia