Languages of The Marshall Islands - Variation

Variation

The Republic of Marshall Islands contains 34 atolls which are split into two chains: the eastern Ratak Chain and the western Ralik Chain. These two chains have different dialects, which differ mainly lexically, and are mutually intelligible. The island Ujelang in the west has "slightly less homogeneous speech."

The Ratak and Ralik dialects differ phonetically in how they deal with stems that begin with double consonants. Ratak Marshallese inserts a vowel to separate the consonants, while Ralik adds a vowel before the consonants (and pronounced an unwritten consonant before the vowel). For example, the stem kkure 'play' becomes ukkure in Ralik Marshallese and kukure in Ratak Marshallese.