Description:
South Marquesan is the Marquesic, East Central Polynesian language spoken in the southern Marquesas Islands, as well as on Ua Huka in the northern Marquesas.
The three most noticeable differences between it and North Marquesan are its preference for /n/, /f/ and /ʔ/ (glottal stop) in some cases where North Marquesan uses /k/, /h/ and /k/.
This difference can be seen in such pairs as
Even the name of the island Ua Huka is, in South Marquesan, "Ua Huna".
The dialects fall roughly into four groups:..... full article at Wikipedia |