Our team of community leaders and researchers is creating new resources to read and listen to the Nukuoro language, learn Nukuoro skills like carving and weaving, and connect ancient and modern Nukuoro ways of life. Check out some of our stories, pictures, and videos on the pages linked below 👇
This website contains texts, audio, video, and photos that have been recorded during two documentation projects: one carried out by Vern Carroll, Raymonde Carroll, and Tobias Soulik on Nukuoro Atoll between 1963-1966, and one led by Johnny Rudolph and Emily Drummond in Kolonia, Pohnpei and on Nukuoro Atoll from 2015-present. This page acts a companion resource to the Nukuoro Living Dictionary, which was created in 2013 by Kurt Erwin, Maynard Henry, Johnny Rudolph, Greg Anderson, and K. David Harrison.
From left: Leonie Maurer, Emily Drummond, Johnny Rudolph, Ben Adolph, Harson Henry, Dagger Soulik, and Margaret Asperheim. Not pictured: Itaia Fred.
The Nukuoro Documentation Initiative began in 2015 as a collaboration between Johnny Rudolph, a Nukuoro community leader and historian, and Emily Drummond, a PhD student in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Initiative has recently grown to include three more Nukuoro members—Ben Adolph, Itaia Fred, Harson Henry, and Dagger Soulik—as well as two more academics: Margaret Asperheim, a masters' student in Linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and Leonie Maurer, a PhD student in Art History at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
If you would like to be a part of the project, or have questions about any of the materials on this site, please contact us.
Nukuoro is spoken on Nukuoro Atoll, an outlying island of the Federated States of Micronesia. Many Nukuoro speakers live in the capital of Pohnpei, as well as in Guam and the United States. There are an estimated 1,000 speakers of Nukuoro worldwide.
Nukuoro is a Polynesian Outlier language, which means it is spoken outside of the Polynesian triangle (the area that lies between New Zealand, Hawai'i, and Easter Island). It is closely related to its neighbor Kapingamarangi, the only other Polynesian language spoken in Micronesia.
