Micronesian

The Micronesian languages form a family of about twenty Oceanic languages within the Austronesian family, scattered across the low atolls of the Caroline, Gilbert and Marshall archipelagos in the north-western Pacific. Their ancestors reached the region roughly two thousand years ago, probably settling Kosrae first by way of the Solomon Islands or northern Vanuatu and then spreading westwards.

The family's members include Marshallese, Kiribati, Kosraean, Chuukese, Pohnpeian and Nauruan. The first recorded European encounter in the region was the Magellan expedition, which landed in the Marianas in 1521, when the languages were still carried entirely by oral tradition.