Chuukese

Chuukese, formerly also spelled Trukese, is an Austronesian Micronesian language spoken chiefly on the islands of Chuuk Lagoon in the Caroline Islands. It belongs to the Chuukic subgroup, alongside Woleaian and Carolinian. Its speakers descend from Austronesian settlers linked to the Lapita culture, who had established villages on the lagoon's islands by the second and first centuries before Christ; a distinct Chuukese society had taken shape by the fourteenth century.

The Spanish navigator Alvaro de Saavedra made the first recorded European sighting in 1528, and Alonso de Arellano visited the lagoon in 1565. Spain claimed the Carolines, though no real colonial administration reached Chuuk in this era.

The language remained unwritten, passed on orally between generations. It allows word-initial doubled consonants, retained from the common ancestor of the western Micronesian languages while most sister languages lost them.