Marshallese
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Marshallese (also known as Ebon), along with English, serves as the official
language of the people of the Marshall Islands.
Marshallese most likely has roots in the languages spoken by the indigenous peoples
of Taiwan. It is widely held that about 8,000 years ago a migration began, initially
from Southern China to the island of Taiwan, and continued from Taiwan to the outlying
islands and atolls of the Pacific by seafaring peoples over several thousands of
years. This migration of peoples has spawned the wide array of languages – over
1,200 – that belong to the Austronesian family of languages, including Polynesian
languages such as Hawai’ian. This one family represents one-fifth of the known languages
in the world and includes the Micronesian subfamily of languages, of which Marshallese
is a member. Marshallese uses a Latin-based alphabet with 22 consonants and a series
of unusual accent marks. Because Marshallese has multiple spelling standards, the
same word can be spelled in a different manner from island to island, or even from
school to school.1,2
In the United States, Marshallese ranks 108th of 322 languages being spoken in the
home, with a reported 5655 people using Marshallese in the home. Native speakers
are heavily concentrated in Hawaii and Arkansas; in Honolulu County, Hawaii, 2,200
of 876,000 residents is a Marshallese speaker (approximately 2,215 people of an
estimated county population of 876,156 people).3
There are currently no available rankings from the Defense Language Institute (DLI)
or the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) on the difficulty of learning and mastery
of Marshallese for native English speakers. Based on other Austronesian languages
such as Hawai’ian, Javanese and Tagalog, Marshallese could be considered the equivalent
of a “category three” (out of four) language on the DLI scale.
Marshallese is one of the ten NSLC Pilot Program languages
Marshallese is designated as one of the 10 pilot languages that the NLSC is recruiting
during its pilot year. The languages chosen were selected based upon the following:
- Short- and long-term requirements with emphasis on high-level expertise in languages critical to our national security.
- These languages generally meet the requirements for a pilot such as this based on the number of persons residing in the United States who are proficient in these languages.
- The list of languages includes some whose populations are difficult to locate and recruit.
- Each of these languages has multiple proficiency tests available.
Interesting Resources on Marshallese
- Wikipedia Marshallese Language Page
- Wikipedia Austronesian Language Page
- U.S. English Foundation, unpublished research
