Mortlockese

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Micronesian language spoken by people on the Mortlock Islands in the Chuuk region of the Federated States of Micronesia
2. A dialect of the Chuukic branch of Micronesian languages used by communities in the Mortlock Islands of Chuuk State
3. The indigenous tongue of the atoll communities of the Mortlock Islands, closely related to Chuukese and spoken in Micronesia

Etymology: Mortlockese is the language spoken on the Mortlock Islands, a low-lying atoll group in the Federated States of Micronesia in the central Pacific. The name combines "Mortlock," the island group's name, with the suffix "-ese," the same ending found in words like "Japanese" and "Maltese," which marks a language or the people who speak it. The island group itself takes its name from a British trader, James Mortlock, whose ship is said to have visited the islands in the early 1800s, so the word is a compound of a personal surname turned place name and a standard English suffix. Because the suffix is so familiar, the word reads like a simple label, which is exactly what it is: a technical name for a regional language, coined by the same process that produced most names of this type.