Palauan is an official language, along with English, spoken in the Republic of Palau.
- It is also spoken by a small minority in Guam and Northern Mariana Islands.
There are approximately 18,000 native speakers of Palauan.
- Around 14,000 of these speakers live in Palau.
Palauan belongs to the Austronesian family of languages.
- It is part of the Malayo-Polynesian branch.
Palauan uses Latin script.
- Formerly, Katakana script was used in writing the language.
- Here is the alphabet, as presented by Omniglot:
Palauan is considered by some to be a VOS (verb-object-subject) language. Others consider it to be a SVO (subject-verb-object) language.
- The language is listed in Ethnologue as a SVO type language, like English.
Click here to learn some Palauan words and phrases.
Here’s a sample of someone speaking Palauan:
For more Palauan language resources, visit here.
References:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palauan_language
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/palauan.htm
Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twentieth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.
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