Languages of Nauru

Nauruan Language is the official language of the Republic of Nauru; it is a distinct island language which is spoken by almost 96% of the ethnic Nauruan’s on the Island. However, since Nauruan language is not common outside the island, Nauran people are very good and quite fluent in English, which is the official language for the government and the commerce sector especially.

Nauruan language:
Nauruan language is part of the Austronesian Languages which is spoken in the Nauru Island. Austronesian languages are the languages spoken in the Australian and Micronesian regions. There are almost seven thousand speakers of the Nauruan Language, and interestingly almost all of them can speak English along with it. Internationally, Nauruan language is a United Nations recognized language and has codes of ‘na’ nad ‘nau’ in the ISO 369 standard.

Nauruan Pidgin English:
As the Asians arrived, came the Chinese and other such languages as well and thus as a result of merging of Chinese and Malenesian type pidgins, a new form of English based pidgin came into existence and its spoken by some people on the Nauru Island.

1938 reforms in the language:
In the year 1938, the Nauruan Language committee and Timothy Detudamo got together in an effort to make Nauruan language easy and compatible for the Europeans and Americas so that they can easily understand and learn it. Many new symbols for various soundings in the Nauruan language were introduced. This has somehow created a bit of ease for the foreigners to learn about the Nauruan language.

Dialects:
In 1937, a report was published in the Sydney, according to which Nauruan language is said to have a great diversity of dialects until the Germans approached the Island in 1888, another factor was the publication of first textual material in Nauruan language which paved the way for a universal and common dialect. Before the Germans the Nauruan dialects are said to be so different that people from various districts had problem in understanding each other’s dialect.

However with the increase of the foreign influence and the entry of foreign languages the dialects were mixed up and finally they came up with a standardized version of Nauruan language and the same standard version of Nauruan language was then used by people in dictionaries and translation, among which the works of Alois Kayser and Philip Delaporte are worth mentioning here.

Today in Modern Nauru, there is very little difference in the dialects, the only difference worth mentioning is spoken in and around the Yaren District, which is actually an eponymous dialect, which is just slight different from the rest of Island.