Yapese is an Austronesian language in the Oceanic branch spoken on the island of Yap, in the Federated States of Micronesia.

This new orthography using the letter q is not in universal use, but many works and maps about Yap write place names using the new q-orthography.

For example: before the introduction of the new 1970s orthography, the indigenous name of the Yap Main Islands was (and still is) spelled Waab, where the glottal stop is assumed to be between the double vowel letters.

A general rule developed organically over time especially when it came to the introduction of the more-widely accepted apostrophe ʼ as a glottal stop.

Yapese makes use of reduplication for several morphological functions, including deriving stative adjectives from inchoative adjectives, as in (1a–b), as well as to make diminutives of verbs, as in (2a-b):[4]: 112-114 roowbecome.redroowbecome.red'to become red'roow~roowSTAT~redroow~roowSTAT~red'to be red'toeychoptoeychop'to chop'si-toey~toeyDIM-DIM~chopsi-toey~toeyDIM-DIM~chop'to chop a little'Yapese distinguishes between three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and three persons (first, second, and third), as well as clusivity in its personal pronouns.