18 March 2019

Yapese "See something, say something"

Public service announcements in TheBus in Honolulu typically include two Micronesian languages, Chuukese and Marshallese, in addition to several Asian languages, but I recently saw one that included Yapese, another language in Micronesia that is not closely related to any other Micronesian language, and is in many ways unique among Austronesian languages.

The Yapese text is written in a very barebones orthography, making even fewer distinctions than the Bible orthography. It makes me think someone who speaks but doesn't write Yapese dictated it to someone who transcribed it without knowing much Yapese phonology or grammar (or even the Bible orthography), since they don't write any glottal stops or glottalized consonants (usually marked by an apostrophe), only write 5 vowels, and misanalyze some small grammatical particles. The original spelling is in quotes.

I've respelled each line in something close to the new orthography, but without the controversial q for glottal stops, and also added a line with rough glosses for each word. The naag that I've glossed 'TR' makes transitive verbs out of other words, including words borrowed long ago from Japanese, like dengwa 'telephone' and unteng 'drive', as well as those borrowed more recently from English. The ea glossed 'ART' occurs before specific nouns that are neither indefinite (marked with ba) nor definite (marked with fa). It's interesting that they felt it necessary to define English bus driver in a paraphrase that relies on an older Japanese loan.

"Mu ayweg nem. Mu rin."
Mu ayweeg neem. Mu riin'.
You help you. You do [it].
= Be aware. Take action.

"Mu eg nag e nen nag be guy ni ra bucheg banen"
Mu eeg naag ea n'ean ni ga bea guy ni raa bucheeg ba n'ean
You report TR ART thing that you are seeing that will do-bad a thing
= Report anything you see that will cause harm.

"Mu dengwa nag e 911 fa mog ko bas driver"
Mu dengwa naag ea 911 faa moeg ko bas driver
You telephone TR ART 911 or you.say (it) to bus driver
= Call 911 or tell the bus driver

"(un ni be unteng nag e bas)"
(an ni bea unteng naag ea bas)
(person that is driving TR ART bus)
= (the person who is driving the bus)

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