Languages of The Marshall Islands - Orthography

Orthography

There are two competing orthographies for Marshallese. The "old" orthography was introduced by missionaries. This system is not highly consistent or faithful in representing the sounds of Marshallese, but until recently had no competing orthography. It is currently widely used, including in newspapers and signs. The "new" orthography is gaining popularity, especially in schools and among young adults and children. The "new" orthography represents the sounds of the Marshallese language more faithfully, and it is the system used in the Marshallese-English dictionary by Abo et al., currently the only complete published Marshallese dictionary.

Here is the current alphabet, as promoted by the Republic of the Marshall Islands. It consists of 24 letters.

The cedillas and macron diacritics are often replaced by ad hoc spellings using more common characters. The online version of the Marshallese-English dictionary uses the following characters:

Marshallese spelling is highly variable even within a single orthography. For example, ejjelok (no or not) is sometimes spelled ejelok and aoleb is sometimes spelled aolep. Additionally, the orthography does not distinguish between some phonemic contrasts, which much be inferred from context.