| Description:
North Marquesan is the Marquesic, East Central Polynesian language spoken in the northern Marquesas Islands.
The three most noticeable differences between it and South Marquesan are its preference for /k/ in some cases where South Marquesan uses /n/ and /ʔ/ (glottal stop) and its complete replacement of the /f/ of South Marquesan with /h/.
This difference can be seen in such pairs as
North Marquesan exhibits some particularly interesting characteristics. It alone seems to have taken "the other path" in the simplification of Proto-Polynesian nasalized consonants. Where most Polynesian languages simplified *mb to /m/, North Marquesan has /p/, and where most simplified *nd to /n/, North Marquesan has /t/. While some Polynesian languages maintained the velar nasal /ŋ/, many have lost the distinction between the nasals /ŋ/ and /n/, merging both into /n/. North Marquesan, however, prefers /k/. Another notable feature of North Marquesan is that from it, it appears that Proto-Polynesian had a consonant cluster *kt, or perhaps a palatal stop (as is the case with all comparative and reconstructive linguistics, this is the subject of some debate)... Whatever that cluster or stop might have..... full article at Wikipedia |
