Koror is the state comprising the main commercial centre of the Republic of Palau . It consists of several islands, the most prominent being Koror Island (also Oreor Island ). It is Palau’s most populous state.
34-528: In the oral tradition of Palau, Koror is one of the children of Milad, and thus occupies an important position in traditional belief. In addition, Koror is the home of the clan of the Ibedul , the high chief of Palau. Several traditional villages in Koror span the volcanic and rock island portions. Many of the stone platforms , odesongel, serve as clan cemeteries, and other stone features serve as shrines. The lagoon
68-678: A Spanish missionary expedition commanded by Sargento Mayor Francisco Padilla on board the patache Santísima Trinidad . Two years later they were explored in detail by the expedition of Spanish naval officer Bernardo de Egoy. He was part of the Captaincy General of the Philippines, dependent on the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In 1919 it became the capital of the South Seas Mandate . LtCol Earl Hancock Ellis ,
102-457: A pro-drop language with preverbal subject agreement morphemes , final pronominal subjects are deleted (or null ). Example 1: Ak milenga er a ringo pro . (means: 'I was eating the apple.') In the preceding example, the abstract null pronoun pro is the subject 'I,' while the clause-initial ak is the first person singular subject agreement morpheme. On the other hand, those who have analyzed Palauan as SVO necessarily reject
136-522: A ngikel a bilis 'The dog eats up fish' (lit. it-eat-PERFECTIVE-INFIX-m- fish ARTICLE dog). The verb system points to fossilized forms related to the Philippine languages. The word order of Palauan is usually thought to be verb–object–subject (VOS) , but this has been a matter of some debate in the linguistic literature. Those who accept the VOS analysis of Palauan word order generally treat Palauan as
170-430: A retail facility located on the jail's grounds. The jail consists of three structures, and it is surrounded by an eight-foot wire mesh fence and an eight-foot concrete wall. Koror has its own constitution, adopted in 1983. The state government was established in 1983. The state of Koror has an elected chief executive, governor . The state also has a legislature elected every four years. The state population elects one of
204-648: A single syllable ). A list of diphthongs and corresponding Palauan words containing them are given below, adapted from Zuraw (2003) . The extent to which it is accurate to characterize each of these vowel sequences as diphthongs has been a matter of debate, as in Wilson 1972 , Flora 1974 , Josephs 1975 , and Zuraw 2003 . Nevertheless, a number of the sequences above, such as /ui/ , clearly behave as diphthongs given their interaction with other aspects of Palauan phonology like stress shift and vowel reduction. Others do not behave as clearly like monosyllabic diphthongs. In
238-404: Is a remnant of an earlier writing system developed during German occupation when the glottal stop was pronounced as a fricative [ x ] . Some older Palauans still remember their grandparents pronouncing ch this way. In modern Palauan usage the sound [ x ] has been completely replaced by [ ʔ ] , but the ch spelling persists. The second is e , which represents either
272-516: Is always registered via the addition of a suffix to the noun (also triggering a shift in stress to the suffix). The possessor agreement suffixes have many different irregular forms that only attach to particular nouns, and they must be memorized on a noun-by-noun basis ( Josephs 1997 :96). However, there is a "default" e-set suffixes (see Josephs 1997 :93 and Nuger 2016 :28), shown below: There are some morphophonological changes, often unpredictable, including: ( Josephs 1997 ) Palauan verb morphology
306-518: Is an important resource area, and was probably intensively exploited prehistorically. The first sighting of Koror, Babeldaob , and Peleliu recorded by Westerners was by the Spanish expedition of Ruy López de Villalobos at the end of January, 1543. They were then charted as Los Arrecifes (The Reefs in Spanish). In November and December 1710 these three islands were again visited and explored by
340-436: Is highly complex. menga(ng) 'eat', for example, may be analyzed as verb prefix me- + imperfective -ng- + kal , in which -kal is an archimorpheme that is only apparent from comparing various forms, e.g. kall 'food' and taking into consideration morphophonemic patterns: Ng milenga a ngikel a bilis 'the dog was eating fish' (lit. it VERB PREFIX-m eat-PAST INFIX-il- ARTICLE fish ARTICLE dog); Ng kma
374-609: Is involved in urban development with gardens interspersed with houses and business. The Rock Islands offer valuable areas for exploiting the rich lagoon, and for the development of the tourist industry. Koror was formerly the capital of the South Seas Mandate , a League of Nations mandated territory administered by the Empire of Japan . In 2015, of the 17,661 people living in Palau, 65% or 11,444 lived in Koror State. The median age
SECTION 10
#1732773316503408-639: Is no phonemic / n / in Palauan. This gap is due to a historical sound shift from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *n to / l / . On May 10, 2007, the Senate of Palau passed Bill No. 7-79 , which mandates that educational institutions recognize the Palauan orthography laid out in Josephs 1997 and Josephs 1999 . The bill also establishes an Orthography Commission to maintain the language as it develops as well as to oversee and regulate any additions or modifications to
442-399: Is not covered by soil, but instead consists of dog-toothed sharp chunks of reef which have broken off of the crags and spires jutting skyward in an unpredictable maze. The islands are covered by a rock island forest and vines clinging to crevices in the limestone. In places, sinkholes contain marine lakes, and in other places the sinkholes contain wind-blown soil. Presently, most land in Koror
476-443: Is unambiguously plural. Non-human nouns do not display this distinction, e.g., the word for 'stone', bad , can denote either a singular 'stone' or multiple 'stones.' Some possessed nouns in Palauan also inflect to agree with the person, number, and humanness of their possessors. For example, the unpossessed noun tebel means simply 'table,' whereas one of its possessed forms tebelek means 'my table.' Possessor agreement
510-581: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) . While the phonemic inventory of Palauan is relatively small, comparatively, many phonemes contain at least two allophones that surface as the result of various phonological processes within the language. The full phonetic inventory of consonants is given below in IPA (the phonemic inventory of vowels, above, is complete). Palauan contains several diphthongs (sequences of vowels within
544-488: The Yapese language . These include fish names for the sea eel , yellowfin tuna ( Thunnus albacares ), left-eye flounder ( Bothus mancus ), triggerfish , sailfish , barracuda ( Sphyraena barracuda ), damsel fish ( Abudefduf sp.), squirrelfish ( Holocentrus spp.), unicorn fish ( Naso spp.), trevally , land crab ( Cardisoma rotundus ), and wrasse . This suggests that Oceanic speakers had influenced
578-733: The branch is unclear. It is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family of languages , and is one of only two indigenous languages in Micronesia that are not part of the Oceanic sub-branch of that family, the other being Chamorro (see Dempwolff 1934 , Blust 1977 , Jackson 1986 , and Zobel 2002 ). Roger Blench (2015) argues that based on evidence from fish names, Palauan had early contact with Oceanic languages either directly or indirectly via
612-667: The course of the year , averaging roughly 27 °C (81 °F). On 22 March 2018, Koror recorded a temperature of 35.0 °C (95.0 °F), which is the highest temperature to have ever been recorded in Palau. [REDACTED] This article incorporates public domain material from Snyder, David; Adams, William Hampton; Butler, Brian M. (1997). Archaeology and historic preservation in Palau . Anthropology research series / Division of Cultural Affairs, Republic of Palau 2. San Francisco: U.S. National Park Service. Malakal, Palau Ibedul Palau has several traditional chiefs of its 16 states . A factor that resulted in
646-410: The current official orthography. The following set of pronouns are the pronouns found in the Palauan language: Palauan nouns inflect based on humanness and number via the plural prefix re- , which attaches to plural human nouns (see Josephs 1975 :43). For example, the word chad 'person' is a human noun that is unambiguously singular, whereas the noun rechad people is a human noun that
680-569: The decline of chiefly authority in Palau was the introduction of elected governors , called upon in the Constitution of Palau which came into effect on 1 January 1981. Ibedul is a title given to the high chief of Koror , in Palau , who is also the head of the Idid clan. Koror is the most populated state with approximately 64% of Palauans living there as of 2020 and so historically bearers of
714-624: The early 1970s, the Palau Orthography Committee worked with linguists from the University of Hawaii to devise an alphabet based on the Latin script . The resulting orthography was largely based on the "one phoneme/one symbol" notion, producing an alphabet of twelve native consonants, six consonants for use in loan words, and ten vowels. The 20 vowel sequences listed under Diphthongs are also all officially recognized in
SECTION 20
#1732773316503748-599: The first Director of Marine Corps Intelligence , died on Koror in May 1923. On 7 October 2006, Ngerulmud replaced Koror as Palau's capital city. The state of Koror (population 11,444 as of 2015) contains about 65% of the population of the country. The nation's former capital and largest town, also called Koror or Koror City , is located here. The town has a population of 11,200 and is located at 07°20′32″N 134°28′38″E / 7.34222°N 134.47722°E / 7.34222; 134.47722 . Besides Koror City and
782-406: The fishing culture of Palau, and had been fishing and trading in the vicinity of Palau for quite some time. Blench (2015) also suggests that the Palauan language displays influence from Central Philippine languages and Samalic languages . The phonemic inventory of Palauan consists of 10 consonants and 6 vowels. Phonetic charts of the vowel and consonant phonemes are provided below, utilizing
816-427: The full vowel [ ɛ ] in primary and secondary stressed syllables, or a schwa [ ə ] in unstressed syllables; the conditions are similar to those of English vowel reduction (stress in Palauan is largely penultimate, with many semi-regular exceptions). The third is the digraph ng , which is a (phonemic) velar nasal / ŋ / but can assimilate to be pronounced as [ m ] or [ n ] . There
850-475: The land use has not been quite as intense and areas on the northwest coast contain stands of volcanic island forest. To the south, the Rock Islands offer a landscape that appears out of this world. The Rock Islands consist of uplifted coralline limestone reef with shear cliffs rising above a characteristic sea-level notch. Small beaches have formed in a few coves and provide access to the interiors. The ground
884-618: The members of the House of Delegates of Palau . The island of Koror is connected by bridges to three neighbouring islands: A main road extends through Koror along the central ridge, from the Koror-Babeldaob Bridge on the east to its western end in Medalaii. A network of secondary roads extends throughout the residential areas, and causeways connect Koror to Ngerekebesang and Ngemelachel Islands. Docking facilities are found on
918-533: The most varied range of geography in Micronesia with many different kinds of physical and social settings. In the northern part of the state are three volcanic islands: Koror, Ngerekebesang , and Ngemelachel . Across Koror Island, the intensive land use in the last two centuries has radically altered the land's shape. Most vegetation has been cleared for house construction or put into gardens. Steep slopes have dense secondary growth brush. On Ngerekebesang Island,
952-805: The northern coast in Meketii and on the southern coast in Medalaii. The major harbor facility for Palau is located on the east side of Ngemelachel Island. Malakal Harbor offers a sheltered, deep-water anchorage and has been in continual use since the 1840s. Most goods found in the many stores throughout Palau come through this port. Koror features a tropical rainforest climate under the Köppen climate classification . The town experiences an extraordinary amount of rainfall annually, averaging around 3,750 mm (148 in) of precipitation annually over 263.4 precipitation days. As with many areas with this climate type, temperatures remain relatively constant throughout
986-485: The orthography. Most of the letters/graphemes in written Palauan correspond to phonemes that can be represented by the corresponding segments in the International Phonetic Alphabet ( Nuger 2016 :308), e.g., Palauan b is the phoneme / b / . Three notable exceptions are worth mentioning. The first is ch , which is invariably pronounced as a glottal stop [ ʔ ] . The ch digraph
1020-440: The pro-drop analysis, instead analyzing the subject agreement morphemes as subject pronouns. In the preceding example, SVO-advocates assume that there is no pro and that the morpheme ak is simply an overt subject pronoun meaning 'I'. One potential problem with this analysis is that it fails to explain why overt (3rd person) subjects occur clause-finally in the presence of a co-referring 3rd person "subject pronoun" --- treating
1054-540: The title were erroneously referred to as "Kings of Pelew" despite them not having authority over all of modern-day Palau. Palauan language Palauan ( a tekoi er a Belau ) is a Malayo-Polynesian language native to the Republic of Palau , where it is one of the two official languages , alongside English . It is widely used in day-to-day life in the country. Palauan is not closely related to other Malayo-Polynesian languages and its exact classification within
Koror - Misplaced Pages Continue
1088-471: The town of Meyuns , there are a total of 11 hamlets in the state of Koror: Koror State stretches across a large portion of the lagoon extending from Babeldaob Island on the north almost to Beliliou Island to the south. Though widely spread, the actual land mass of Koror is not great and consists of hundreds of islands and islets including most of the Rock Islands of Palau. Koror encompasses perhaps
1122-545: The world's largest dolphin research facility, is open for tourists who are interested in swimming and interacting with trained dolphins . Most tourists to Palau stay in Koror, which is the centre for Palau's resort services and house modern conveniences. Koror has businesses that cater to speakers of many languages. By 2001, the Koror Jail , Palau's only correctional facility, has become a tourist destination thanks to inmates who create and sell elaborate wooden storyboards at
1156-615: Was 33.5 years. The official languages of the state are Palauan and English . In June 1972, the resident population was 6,032. Schools in Koror operated by the Ministry of Education include: Belau Air has its headquarters in Koror, as did the short-lived Pacific Flier in 2010. Much of Palau's economy comes from tourism. The Rock Islands of Palau are all located in the state. Scuba diving shops and facilities are located all over Koror. Accommodation like hotels, bars, restaurants, cafes, and resorts are all available. Dolphins Pacific ,
#502497