Kajin Majel

Marshallese, self-called Kajin Majōl and sometimes known as Ebon after one of its atolls, is a Micronesian language of the Eastern Oceanic branch of Austronesian. Austronesian settlers reached these coral atolls as early as the second millennium BC, bringing coconuts, breadfruit and chickens. Their speech evolved into the language of two parallel island chains, with western Rālik and eastern Ratak dialects.

Proto-Micronesian consonants split under the influence of neighbouring vowels into palatalised, velarised and rounded series. The first Europeans were Spaniards: Alonso de Salazar reached Taongi in 1526 and Álvaro de Saavedra visited Ujelang and Enewetak in 1528.

Spanish galleons thereafter avoided the islands. European charts later named them after the British captain John Marshall, who sailed through in 1788.