Philip Delaporte

Reverend Philip Adam Delaporte was a German-born American Protestant missionary who translated numerous texts from German into Nauruan. Delaporte was sent to Nauru with his family in November 1899, and returned to America in 1917.

Delaporte and his family, including his wife, Salome (also a missionary), arrived in Nauru under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sent by Central Union Church of Honolulu. They had travelled from Hawaii via Kusaie.

The mission in Nauru, founded by a Gilbertese pastor named Tabuia approximately 10 years before Delaporte's arrival, contained the only formal educational institute on the island at the time.

During this time, both Delaporte and his wife translated many religious texts including the New Testament, stories from the Old Testament, a catechism, a hymn book, a history of the Christian Church and a book designed for use in the school.

In 1907, still living in Nauru, Delaporte published his pocket German-Nauruan dictionary (Taschenwörterbuch Deutsch-Nauru), some of which is replicated in the table below.

The dictionary is small, measuring about 4" x 5" (10.5 cm x 14 cm) in size. The book was nearly 100 pages, with 65 devoted to a glossary and a dozen to alphabetically arranged phrases in German and Nauruan. Some 1650 German words appear in the dictionary, along with about 1300 'unique' Nauruan forms (excluding diacritical marks).

In Delaporte's Taschenwörterbuch Deutsch-Nauru (German-Nauruan Dictionary), an orthography was used, consisting of 32 characters in total:

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