Chuukese language

Chuukese (/tʃuːˈkiːz/), also rendered Trukese (/trʌˈkiːz/), is a Chuukic language of the Austronesian language family spoken primarily on the islands of Chuuk in the Caroline Islands in Micronesia. There are communities of speakers in Pohnpei, and Guam. Estimates show that there are about 45,900 speakers in Micronesia.

Chuukese is an Austronesian language of the Micronesian subbranch. It is one of the dialects making up the Chuukic subgroup of Micronesian languages, together with its close relatives like Woleaian, and Carolinian.

Chuukese has the unusual feature of permitting word-initial geminate (double) consonants. The common ancestor of Western Micronesian languages is believed to have had this feature, but most of its modern descendants have lost it.

Truk and Chuuk are different in orthography, and both older ⟨tr⟩ and current ⟨ch⟩ transcribe the sound [ʈʂ].

Consonants are doubled in Chuuk when they have a voiceless sound. Some consonant combinations are frequently denasalized between vowels when doubled.

/ɨ/ can be heard as either central [ɨ] or back [ɯ].

Chuukese is one of the few languages allowing for word initial double consonants:

• Chuukese Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database (Archive)
• Howard, Jocelyne. "CHUUKESE TRANSLATIONS." () University of Hawaii.
• Kaipuleohone have archive materials for Chuukese including written materials, audio recordings, and additional audio recordings from Brian Diettrich's MA thesis.
• Portland State University Multicultural Topics in Communications Sciences & Disorders | Chuukese Archived 2020-05-19 at the Wayback Machine