1 Palauan English: history, status and linguistic characteristics * David Britain Institut für Englische Sprachen und Literaturen Universität Bern Länggassstrasse 49 3000 BERN 9 Switzerland david.britain@ens.unibe.ch Kazuko Matsumoto Department of Language and Information Sciences University of Tokyo 3-8-1 Komaba Meguro TOKYO 153-8902 Japan kmatsu@boz.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp 1. Introduction The Republic of Palau/Beluu ęr a Belau is an independent nation state of the Western Pacific, consisting of an archipelago of around 350 small islands stretched across 400 miles of ocean. Its nearest neighbours are Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to the south, the Federated States of Micronesia to the east, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to the northeast, and the Philippines to the west. The islands have a population of around 20,000, of which over 60% live in the largest city and former capital of Koror (Office of Planning and Statistics 2006: 23). The capital, in 2006, was moved to Ngerulmud, in Melekeok State on the main island of Babeldaob. For most of the 20th century, Palau was under colonial administration: by Spain (1885–1899), Germany (1899–1914), Japan (1914– 1945), and finally, the United States of America (1945–1994). It formally gained its independence in 1994. * Our work on Palauan English has been supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan: Ref. No. 22682003 (2010-2013). We would like to thank our research assistants Akiko Okumura, Tobias Leonhardt, Dominique Bürki and Dorothee Weber for their invaluable contribution to the progress of this research.