An additional several hundred Nukuoro speakers live in Kolonia, Pohnpei, with smaller diaspora communities elsewhere in Micronesia and in the United States.

[3] Nukuoro is most closely related to Kapingamarangi, the only other Polynesian language found in Micronesia.

The Nukuoro writing system was developed by Chief Leka in the 1920s, perhaps with the assistance of resident Europeans or missionaries in Ponape.

The orthography of Nukuoro represents these voiceless stops with b, d, g. The alveolar tap /ɾ/ is represented in Nukuoro orthography using the letter l, although early records of Nukuoro (and in fact, the spelling of the language name itself) use r. Since singleton /p/, /t/, /k/ are written with b, d, g, geminate /p/, /t/, /k/ are written with p, t, k. Geminated /m/, /n/, /s/, /h/, /ɾ/ are represented with double letters (mm, nn, ss, hh, ll), and geminated /ŋ/ is written as nng.

galolook→ galogalolook all aroundgalo → galogalolook {} {look all around}senisleep→ senisenioversleepseni → senisenisleep {} oversleepdabaflash of light→ dabadabatwinkling, flashingdaba → dabadaba{flash of light} {} {twinkling, flashing}The basic word order in Nukuoro is Subject-Verb-Object, but there are also cases of Verb-Subject-Object.

Template for a basic Nukuoro sentence with example: Au1SGsubjecteNPSTaspectduguputverbangeDIR.3particlesde beebaaDET bookobjectgi honga tebele.to top DET.tableprepositional phraseAu e dugu ange {de beebaa} {gi honga tebele}.1SG NPST put DIR.3 {DET book} {to top DET.table}subject aspect verb particles object {prepositional phrase}'I put the book on the table.

Historically, Nukuoro had an ergative-absolutive alignment, a system retained in many related languages.

Aspect, as opposed to tense, marks "[the] different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation".

The primary and probably most informative one is Vern Carroll's book An Outline of the Structure of the Language of Nukuoro.

This lexicon was initially populated with sound recordings from Nukuoro speakers Johnny Rudolph, Maynard Henry, and Kurt Erwin.

After World War 2, there were already efforts to help preserve the language as the United States set up an elementary school taught completely in Nukuoro.