cogman10 4 days ago

That's what's mind-blowing to me about pohnpei. It's an island with an airport and internet. English is the official language but according to my relative the native language is what everyone uses day to day. It has about 40k residents. Literacy is 98%.

Yet with all that, the spoken language remains unwritten. That's just wild to me.

1
asveikau 4 days ago

According to Wikipedia, the two most spoken indigenous languages on Pohnpei are written with the Latin alphabet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pohnpeian_language

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuukese_language

See the "phonology" and "orthography" sections of the respective articles. It seems like both have a standard orthography.

cogman10 4 days ago

Very interesting.

Perhaps my family member confused the fact that the religion had no training materials for the language with there being no written version of the language. (I'm admittedly ignorant about this, I just had a conversation with them on Saturday)

I wonder if the language isn't as commonly written as it is spoken?