Palauan Language Online: Online Palau Language Resources and Assorted Anthropological Publications

• Lewis Josephs
  
• Chedaol Biblia
  
• Richard Parmentier
  
• Justin Nuger
  
• Carol Georgopoulos
  
• Kazuko Matsumoto
  
• Miscellany
  
  • Palauan Language Children's Stories
    
  • Other Palauan Language Documents
    
  • Other Academic Linguistics
    
  • Other Anthro and Cultural
    
  • Other Miscellany
    
  • The Woleaian Language
    
  • Other Austronesian Languages
    

Online Palau Language Resources and Assorted Anthropological Publications

Retired Syracuse professor of linguistics Lewis Josephs has published several books about Palauan: two dictionaries, a reference grammar, and two grammar handbooks. All are available here in browsable versions.

• Browsable Volume 1 of the 1997 Grammar Handbook Volume 1
• Browsable Volume 1 of the 1997 Grammar Handbook Volume 1
  • Review by Robert Gibson
  • Another Review
• Browsable 1990 Dictionary
  • Google Books Version
  • Purchase at Amazon
• His 1984 article, Complementation in Palauan.
• His 1984 article, The Impact of Borrowing on Palauan.
• Browsable 1975 Reference Grammar
• His student Helen Wilson's 1972 dissertation, The Phonology and Syntax of Palauan Affixes.

The Bible has been translated to the Palauan version, "Chedaol Biblia".

• It may be available through online vendors.
• Wow! It's available as audio with accompying Palauan text at bible.is.
• A Jehovah's Witness version is available as a PDF.
• The Jehovah's Palau website has a ton of other Palauan language documents.

The anthropologist Richard Parmentier published about Palau from the 1980's to the early 2000's.

• Political Function of Reported Speech
• Money Walks, People Talk
• Diagrammatic Icons, Historical Process
• Inventory of Stones [HTML Version]
• House Affiliation Systems in Belau in 1984.

In 2010, Justin Nuger published his disseration in linguistics at UC-Santa Cruz about Palauan verbs. He has made that and other of his publications about Palauan available online. Note that these are difficult, but not impossible, to read as a non-linguist. They are filled with useful examples and the Acknowledgements section in the dissertation is highly amusing.

• Dissertation: Architecture of the Palauan Verbal Complex
• The Syntactic Structure of Palauan Resultatives.
• A Palauan Linguistic Bibliography with many linked PDFs.

The linguist Carol Georgopoulos turned her dissertation, Syntactic Variables: Resumptive Pronouns and A-Binding in Palauan, into a book.

• A review by Mark Durie.
• A 1991 paper by her: Canonical Government ... Weak Crossover.
• A 1984 paper by her: A Study in Agreement Morphology.
• A 1985 paper by her: Variables in Palauan Syntax.

The linguist Kazuko Matsumoto has several publications about contemporary language usage and borrowing:

• The Role of Social Networks . . . , a 2010 paper about contemporary Palauan language usage.
• A sociolinguistic analysis of borrowing in Palauan: Palauan Language Contact and Change: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Borrowing in Palauan.

All Palauan reading materials have been moved here.

Other various Palauan language documents:

• A small document discussing the old names of villages and states.
• A few documents from the Palau Division of Cultural Affairs.
  • Omengereker Ma Kerruul published in 1999.
  • Ulekerreuil a Kodall ma Kemeldiil published in 1995.
• Endemic Birds of Palau from Takesi Suzuki and John Engbring's Field Guide to Birds of Palau.
• An audit of Ngaraard from 2007.
• In 1974, the Department of Education published Steve Umetaro's book about Palauan myths, The Beginning of Palau from Uab to Miladeldil. [English Translation]
• The Pacific Digital Libary has a fair number of documents written in Palauan.
  • Search for "Uchetemel" to find the national and state Constitutions.
• The Palau National Constitution in both English and Palauan.
• The Palau National Anthem with English translation is here and an audio version is here.
• A website with tons of song lyrics.
• The Palau Language Commission webpage.
  • Their meeting minutes from a December 2013 meeting in Palauan.
  • Their 2012 Report on Palauan Grammar has a large amount of Palauan text with an English translation.
• Documents from the US government: Social Security and Homeland Security.
• Something from Hawaii about HIV/AIDS.

Other academic linguistics publications:

• A 2013 paper by Juliette Blevins and Daniel Kaufman: Origins of Palauan Intrusive Velar Nasals.
• A 2013 paper by Daniel Long about Japanese borrowed words: PDF [archived copy].
• A 2010 paper by Ania Łubowicz called Infixation as Morpheme Absorption.
• A 2006 paper by Michael B. Smith all about the word er.
• A 2005 paper by Stefan Engelberg about German borrowing.
• A 2003 paper by Karen Ash Japanese and English Within Palauan.
• A 1995 paper by Osamu Sakiyama called Decipherment and Studies of Early Palauan Word-Lists Collected since the Eighteenth Century.
• A 1994 paper by Tomoko Kawamura called Fixed Segmentism in Palauan Multiple Reduplications.
• A 1993 dissertation by Robert Gibson: Palauan causatives and passives: An incorporation analysis.
• A 1990 paper by Daniel Finer Reduplication and Verbal Morphology in Palauan.
• A 1984 paper Schwa in Palauan by Jo-Ann Flora.
• A 1980 Topicalization and Passive in Palauan by Richard C. Waters.
• A 1976 paper by Charles DeWolf A Syntactic Analysis of the Pronoun System of Palauan.
• A 1968 paper by Robert McKnight called Proverbs of Palau.
• Blust's Austronesian Comparative Dictionary.
• Auckland's Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database for Palauan.

Other academic anthropology publications and cultural descriptions:

• A collection of oral histories of these children called Palauan Children under Japanese Rule: Their Oral Histories as compiled by Maki Mita in 2009.
• The anthropological reports of the German anthropologist Augustin Krämer from 1910:
  • Volume 1
  • Volume 2
  • Volume 3
  • Volume 4
  • Volume 5
  • Volume 6
  • Volume 7
• A shipwreck narrative on Tobi in 1832 from Project Gutenburg.
• Captain Wilson's shipwreck narrative from 1783.
• Birgit Abels wrote a dissertation about Palauan music which also contains nice cultural and historical descriptions of Palau.
• A Note on Palauan Food Categories: Odoim versus Ongraol by Tomoya Akimichi from 1978.
• Report on Palau by J. Useem in 1949.

Some other miscellany:

• The Palauan Language page on Wikipedia.
• A Palauan Studies Resource, 16 States of Palau, with maps and touring info for all 16 Palauans states.
• Open Library also maintains a list of Palauan Language Reading Materials.
• Palau Orthography: A Final Report on the Decisions of the Palau Orthography Committee written in 1972.
  • The document that declares the official rules of the Palauan grammar as determined by a committee of Palauan educators as appointed and directed by the Palauan government.
• Incomplete Palauan Language course on Memrise
• Audio Pronunciation Clips
• A ton of Palauan language radio programming with downloadable mp3's at Palau Wave Radio. [Some are mirrored here].
  • An interview with the Palau Language Committee where they talk about tekinged.com.
  • Note there is a bit of confusion where they say that tekinged.com has not added any new words beyond what was already in Josephs. However tekinged.com has added over 3000 words that were missing from Josephs that were in Kerresel and over another 1000 words that were missing from both.
• President Tommy Remengesau Jr.'s 2015 State of the Republic Address with English text and Palauan audio.
• A 2010 Master of Arts Dissertation Cultivating Identities: Re-Thinking Education in Palau by Kiblas Yalap Soaladaob that has acknowledgements in both Palauan and English and many other interesting aspects such as descriptions of the various Palauan ceremonies.
• Jim Geselbracht has some Palauan language webpages:
  • Jim's Online Palauan-English dictionary [Maybe defunct now.]
  • "Mengesang a Reng" youtube video
  • A Blog about Palauan Music
• There is a pure Palauan dictionary (definitions are in Palauan) but it does not appear to be in print.
  • However, we have a browsable version here.
• A fascinating looking book about conversational Palauan authored by Debbie Tkel-Sbal in 1996 that also appears to be out of print.
  • However, we have a browsable version here.
• The Facebook group, 680 Palauan Words and Phrases, is a friendly, resourceful, and helpful community.
• In 1992, Karen Nero wrote a paper about Palauan politics using the breadfruit story as a frame of reference.
  • A thread about some words missing from the Josephs dictionary.
• A youtube video, Islands on the Edge of Time - A Palauan Documentary that is mostly about the culture and history but does have some Palauan speaking with English captions such as at the 40 minute mark. At the 41 minute mark are children swimming at the Ngeremlengui waterfall.
• A coming of age biography about a Peliliu girl growing up in the years after WWII is mostly cultural but has some Palauan language intermixed.
• A document with personal historical recollections from a variety of individuals with English translations. [archived copy].
• An interesting blog post about borrowed words.
• A blog entry also about Japanese borrowed words: [archived copy].
• Early reader books for K-3 with accompanying audio.
• Words of the Lagoon: Fishing and Marine Lore in the Palau District of Micronesia by R. E. Johannes has a nice glossary of Palauan words for fish and fishing terms starting on page 199.
• Palauan Fish Names, a 1973 paper by Gene S. Helfman and John E. Randall that contains a list of 336 Palauan fishes with the scientific names of 312 of them also included.
• Prototype Analyses of Emotion Terms in Palau, Micronesia a 1995 paper by Kyle D. Smith and Debbie Tkel-Sbal that contains long lists of reng terms describing emotions.
• A bunch of audio recordings of sessions of the Olbiil era Kelulau.
• The Think Big Palau website from a group of Palauans thinking about, researching, and proposing solutions to the challenges facing Palau today.
• Marjorie V. Cushing Falanruw wrote a book about trees in Yap that includes many of their Palauan names as well: Trees of Yap: A Field Guide [Cached PDF].
• University of Hawaii has a website called People and Plants of Micronesia that has the names and pictures of many Palauan plants.

tekinged.com is proud to host an online Woleaian dictionary.
All Woleaian and other Austronesian language materials have been moved here.