[1] The language today has become mutually intelligible with Chuukese, though marked with a distinct Mortlockese accent.

[1][3] There are approximately five to seven thousand speakers of Mortlockese in the Mortlock Islands, Guam, Hawaii, and the United States.

There are at least eleven different dialects that show some sort of correspondence to the Mortlock Island groups.

[2] One factor contributing to the present endangerment of Mortlockese are natural disasters, such as the typhoon that struck the Mortlock Islands in 1907.

[2] In 1907, there was a typhoon that hit the Mortlock island Ta which caused the people there to move to Saipan and Pohnpei.

Family life was important, and obedience was widely accepted by children in fear of a supernatural power punishing them.

Sleeping arrangements may mean men in large homes separate from the women and children.

As early as January 1874, missionaries visited the islands and began building schools to teach the natives religious ways of life.

According to several documents, several changes to the curriculum were made to incorporate native traditions as well as to introduce new information from the Europeans.

Over the span of the 19th century, traders continued to document their visits to the islands allowing evidence of residency.

[2] Natural disasters, war, and other changes to the islands are to blame for the little to no documentation of the Mortlock history and language.

What is left is the writings of missionaries who visited the island to teach the word of God, and to translate the Mortlockese Language into biblical text.

There are documents of what curriculum was taught in the schools opened, as well as the number of students and teachers present.

[4] On Pohnpei, the Mortlocks spoke one of three Mortlockese dialects along with Pohnpeian or English as a second language in the multilingual community they formed.

[5] After a number of years, Mortlockese people living in Pohnpei returned to Pakin Atoll in the Mortlock Islands, where they spoke the kapsen Mwoshulok dialect, exhibiting adaptation and evolution, while retaining Pohnpeian as a second language.

[5] English is the national language in the Mortlock islands; however, most only use it when interacting with people from other places or in school.

The following table includes the numbers used in serial counting, which can also be modified by numeral classifiers.

Table retrieved from p. 50 of A preliminary survey of the economic and social life of the Mortlock Islands people[6] Serial counting requires use of the prefix "e-" and use of any number with a classifier changes the word of "one" from "-e" to "-te.

(pg.129)[2] Verb phrases follow the form (Proclitic prefix) (subject) (TAM marker) (optional adverb) (verb) (suffix) (directional suffix) (object or noun), giving Mortlockese an SVO sentence structure.

The first class is "unaccusatives", which are linked to adjectives and can show that the object is undergoing a process or action.

These include prepositional verbs, which are used with a direct object suffix and are not used with causatives or reduplication to indicate different aspects.

Transitive verbs in Mortlockese can be used alone or followed by a direct object noun phrase in a clause.

An example of linguistic metathesis is shown in the variation of the third-person plural subject proclitic pronoun /ɛr=/ to /rɛ=/ where the use of either is accepted, but an individual speaker will only choose to use one form.

A verb can be combined with causative prefixes, transitive third-person direct object suffixes and thematic vowels (the inclusion of which depends on whether the ending of the verb is a vowel or a consonant) to create descriptive clauses that include pronouns.

These can also be modified to indicate other qualities of the subject, such as in recalling something from the past that is not present with the speakers at the time they choose to discuss it.

[2] The possessive classifier acts as the base of the word, and indicates the relationship of the possessum noun to the possessor.

[2] This gender-restrictive vocabulary shows an example of avoidance speech, a type of honorific, in the Mortlockese Language.