Marshallese orthography

The Marshallese language (Marshallese: new orthography Kajin M̧ajeļ or old orthography Kajin Majōl, [kɑ͡æzʲinʲ(e͡ɤ) mˠɑɑ̯zʲɛ͡ʌɫ]), also known as Ebon, is a Micronesian language spoken in the Marshall Islands by about 44,000 people, and the principal language of the country. There are two major dialects: Rālik (western) and Ratak (eastern).

Marshallese, a Micronesian language, is a member of the Eastern Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian languages. The closest linguistic relatives of Marshallese are the other Micronesian languages, including Chuukese, Gilbertese, Kosraean, Nauruan and Pohnpeian. Marshallese shows 33% lexical similarity with Pohnpeian.

Within the Micronesian archipelago, Marshallese—along with the rest of the Micronesian language group—is not as closely related to the more ambiguously classified Oceanic language Yapese in Yap State, or to the Polynesian outlier languages Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro in Pohnpei State, and even less closely related to the Sunda–Sulawesi languages of Palauan in Palau and Chamorro in the Mariana Islands.