Wiktionary:Mokilese entry guidelines

Mokilese is a Micronesian language spoken on Mokil Atoll in Micronesia.

Mokilese has seven vowel qualities, each of which occurs in two quantities: long and short. The vowels /a e i o u/ are written identically to their IPA values, as ⟨a e i o u⟩. The vowel /ɛ/ is also written ⟨e⟩, meaning it is orthographically indistinguishable from /e/. /ɔ/ is written with the digraph ⟨oa⟩. Long vowels are represented by a following ⟨h⟩. Thus, /aː eː ɛː iː oː ɔː uː/ are Romanized as ⟨ah eh eh ih oh oah uh⟩. Once again, note that there is no orthographic distinction between /eː/ and /ɛː/.

Mokilese nouns can be inflected for definiteness, indefiniteness, and deixis, but not for grammatical number unless inflected in one of the aforementioned categories. Inalienably possessed nouns can also be inflected for the number and person of their possessors.

Singular nouns are equivalent in meaning to English "a" and are marked with one of four suffixes depending on the nature of the noun.

Animate nouns generally include all living and motile creatures, such as jeri (“child”), doahk (“dog”), and eni (“demon, ghost”). The indefinite suffix for these nouns is -men: jerihmen (“a child”), doahkmen (“a dog”), enihmen (“a demon, a ghost”). Note that -men causes lengthening of a word-final vowel.

"Long" nouns include nouns that are long and thin in shape, such as wus (“banana tree”), pinjel (“pencil”), and war (“canoe”). Other vehicles are also part of this class by analogy with war, as are the nouns koaul (“song”) and inoang (“legend”). The indefinite singular of these nouns is marked with -pas: wuspas (“a banana tree”), pinjelpas (“a pencil”), warpas (“a canoe”).

The "parts" class is used for fragments, pieces, or chunks of nouns normally used with other classifiers; its indefinite marker is -kij.

Finally, the "general" class includes all other nouns; its indefinite marker is -w. Some nouns that are normally part of the long objects class, like amper (“umbrella”) can also be treated as general-class nouns. Shellfish are considered general class, while other sea creatures are typically animate but can be general class.

The indefinite plural of all of these classes (equivalent to English some or Spanish unos) is -pwi: umwpwi (“some houses”), woalpwi (“some men”).

The definite singular is marked with the suffix -wa; the definite plural is marked with -koa. There is no distinction between different classes in the definite.