Talk:Yapese language

Early discussion

I am a complete newbie to editing wikipedia pages (as opposed to using them :-)). I have had considerable experience studying Yapese, including two books ("Yapese Reference Grammar" and "Yapese Reference Grammar") and 8 years living and working in Yap in the Education Department. I would like to add to the stub page for "Yapese Language" but am a bit nervous about doing so as I am less than fully confident of a number of facts, and have very limited time.

If anyone has any advice for me, please e-mail me: [removed email address]

John Thayer Jensen 22:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjen009 (talk • contribs)

Hi John, I've removed your email address as Wikipedia pages are copied on many other websites, making email addresses very public. I would recommend Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages for any specific questions but otherwise make sure that you have gone through the Wikipedia:Tutorial and be bold. Cheers, BanyanTree 00:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

John, I'd be happy to help you get info about Yap onto this page. Fascinating language, and I very much appreciate your work. Gholton (talk) 04:23, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Yapese has ejectives

[copied from talk:ejective consonant — kwami (talk) 18:16, 7 August 2012 (UTC)]

The article says "[p’], on the other hand, is quite rare." However, the language of the island of Yap, which I worked on for about 20 years, certainly has what I referred to in my books on the language ("Yapese Reference Grammar" and "Yapese-English Dictionary" - John Thayer Jensen et al) as glottalised consonants, including p', t', k', also f' and th' (inter-dental slit fricative) - also glottalised nasals m', n' and ŋ' - but of course these are not ejectives. Yapese has non-glottalised ch (palatal affricate) and s, but these do not occur glottalised.

I call the stops and fricatives glottalised; they are certainly ejectives by the definition given in the article. --John Thayer Jensen 05:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Micronesian Scouting

Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Ulithian, Woleaian, Yapese, Pohnpeian, Kosraean, and/or Chuukese? Thanks! Chris 04:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Why so much about glottal stop?

I wonder why this article has such a focus on glottal stop? This is a relatively common sound in the world's languages, so not particularly relevant here. (The issue of how to write the glottal stop is another matter, as the <q> has definitely not been well-received in the practical orthography.) A much more distinctive feature is the presence of glottalized consonants, something which is found in only one other Austronesian language (Waima'a of East Timor). Gholton (talk) 04:21, 14 July 2012 (UTC)