Congrats to the team who built the Nukuoro Living Dictionary!

Congrats to Nukuoro language expert Johnny Rudolph, linguist Emily Drummond from UC Berkeley, and the entire support team who helped build the Nukuoro Living Dictionary over the years!

Nukuoro speakers Johnny Rudolph (right) and Ruth Rudolph (left).

Johnny Rudolph (right) interviewing Curtis Charley (left)

Nukuoro speaker Mina Lekka (left), linguist Emily Drummond (middle), and researcher Lydia Ding (right)

Screenshot of the search results for “fish” in the Nukuoro Living Dictionary

At over 6k entries, it is a cultural & linguistic treasure. In particular, this dictionary contains a wide variety of terms related to marine life and local ecological knowledge.

Explore it here:
https://livingdictionaries.app/nukuoro/entries/list

Nukuoro is a Polynesian Outlier language spoken on Nukuoro Atoll, an outlying island of Pohnpei State, Federated States of Micronesia. By recent estimates, there are about 1,200 speakers of Nukuoro worldwide, with Nukuoro communities on Nukuoro Atoll, Pohnpei, Guam, and various places in the United States (Drummond & Rudolph 2021).

While Nukuoro is the primary language of use on Nukuoro Atoll, diaspora communities are facing increased influence from regionally dominant languages like Pohnpeian and English. Many Nukuoro community members under 30 feel more comfortable speaking other languages, or do not identify as Nukuoro speakers at all.

As rising sea levels threaten the sustainability of life on the atoll, diaspora communities will continue to grow, putting greater pressure of majority languages on the Nukuoro-speaking community. The Nukuoro Living Dictionary was created in part to support maintenance of the Nukuoro language outside of Nukuoro Atoll.

Photos are included with permission, and are courtesy of Emily Drummond.