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27-469: The Tongic languages are a small group of Polynesian languages , which consists of at least two languages, Tongan and Niuean , and possibly a third, Niuafoʻouan . This article about Central Pacific languages is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages , itself part of the Oceanic branch of

54-451: A unicameral consonant letter used within the Latin script to mark the phonemic glottal stop . It is also used in many other Polynesian languages, each of which has its own name for the character. Apart from the ʻokina or the somewhat similar Tahitian ʻeta, a common method is to change the simple apostrophe for a curly one, taking a normal apostrophe for the elision and the inverted comma for

81-526: A difference in meaning. One example is the Samoan word susu , which takes the o-possessive in lona susu (her breast) and the a-possessive in lana susu (her breastmilk). Compare also the particles used in the names of two of the books of the Māori Bible: Te Pukapuka a Heremaia (The Book of Jeremiah) with Te Pukapuka o Hōhua (The Book of Joshua); the former belongs to Jeremiah in

108-416: A long vowel, while a vowel without that diacritical mark is short, for example, ā versus a . Sometimes, a long vowel is instead written double, e.g. Maaori . The glottal stop (not present in all Polynesian languages, but, where present, one of the most common consonants ) is indicated by an apostrophe , for example, 'a versus a . Hawaiʻian uses the ʻokina , also called by several other names ,

135-483: A significant degree of understanding of each other's speech. When a particular language shows unexpectedly large divergence in vocabulary, this may be the result of a name-avoidance taboo situation – see examples in Tahitian , where this has happened often. Many Polynesian languages have been greatly affected by European colonization. Both Māori and Hawaiian, for example, have lost many speakers to English , and only since

162-1013: Is much social variation. In some places, outlier populations settled in close proximity to Melanesian or Micronesian populations and seem to have been influenced by them. In other locations, outlier populations remained isolated by geography, ecology, or choice and seem more classically Polynesian. Polynesian outlier cultures are scattered across five countries of the Pacific: in the Federated States of Micronesia , in Papua New Guinea , in Solomon Islands , in Vanuatu , and in New Caledonia . The Federated States of Micronesia has two outlier cultures, Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro . Papua New Guinea has three: Nuguria , Nukumanu , and Takuu . The country with

189-572: The Austronesian family . There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austronesian family. While half of them are spoken in geographical Polynesia (the Polynesian triangle ), the other half – known as Polynesian outliers – are spoken in other parts of the Pacific: from Micronesia to atolls scattered in Papua New Guinea ,

216-617: The Loyalty Islands , where the Fagauvea language is spoken. The outlier groups in Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, and the northern Solomon Islands speak Ellicean languages (which also includes Tuvaluan ), while those further to the south in the Solomons, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia speak Futunic languages (which also includes the language of Wallis and Futuna ). These are two of the branches of

243-673: The Samoic language family , which is sometimes called the Samoan-Outlier language family for this reason. It is a sub-branch of the Nuclear Polynesian languages . In some of these islands, the outlier population may also speak the local Melanesian or Micronesian language. A 1983 study analyzing the DNA of 2400 people in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have found markers which clearly distinguish

270-495: The Solomon Islands or Vanuatu . The most prominent Polynesian languages, by number of speakers, are Samoan , Tongan , Tahitian , Māori and Hawaiian . The ancestors of modern Polynesians were Lapita navigators , who settled in the Tonga and Samoa areas about 3,000 years ago. Linguists and archaeologists estimate that this first population went through common development during about 1000 years, giving rise to Proto-Polynesian ,

297-455: The glottal stop . The latter method has come into common use in Polynesian languages. Polynesian Outliers The closest Polynesian outliers, Anuta and Tikopia in Solomon Islands , were settled some time between the 10th and 13th centuries and subsequently received multiple waves of Polynesian immigration, while the farthest outlier, Nukuoro in the Federated States of Micronesia ,

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324-730: The 1990s have they resurged in popularity. In general, Polynesian languages have three numbers for pronouns and possessives: singular, dual and plural. For example, in Māori: ia (he/she), rāua (they two), rātou (they 3 or more). The words rua (2) and toru (3) are still discernible in endings of the dual and plural pronouns, giving the impression that the plural was originally a trial (threesome) or paucal (a few), and that an original plural has disappeared. Polynesian languages have four distinctions in pronouns and possessives: first exclusive, first inclusive, second and third. For example, in Māori,

351-468: The East Polynesian languages were more closely related to Samoan than they were to Tongan, calling Tongan and its nearby relative Niuean "Tongic" and Samoan and all other Polynesian languages of the study "Nuclear Polynesian". Previously, there had been lexicostatistical studies that squarely suggested a "West Polynesian" group composed of at least Tongan and Samoan and that an "East Polynesian" group

378-485: The East Polynesian tree, further study paused for almost twenty years until Wilson published a study of Polynesian pronominal systems in 1985 suggesting that there was a special relationship between the East Polynesian languages and all other Nuclear Polynesian but for Futunic, and calling that extra-Futunic group the " Ellicean languages ". Furthermore, East Polynesian was found to more likely have emerged from extra-Samoan Ellicean than out of Samoa itself, in contradiction to

405-513: The Māori sounds /k/ , /ɾ/ , /t/ , and /ŋ/ correspond to /ʔ/ , /l/ , /k/ , and /n/ in Hawaiian. Accordingly, "man" is tangata in Māori and kanaka in Hawaiian, and Māori roa "long" corresponds to Hawaiian loa . The famous Hawaiian greeting aloha corresponds to Māori aroha , "love, tender emotion". Similarly, the Hawaiian word for kava is ʻawa . Similarities in basic vocabulary may allow speakers from different island groups to achieve

432-484: The Polynesian "outliers". Their residents generally share racial features found within Polynesia proper. Physically, Polynesians tend to have brown complexions and dark, wavy hair, and they are typically large people of muscular build. The fact that people in all of the Polynesian outliers speak recognizably Polynesian languages implies that their ancestors fairly recently migrated from the Polynesian heartland. Yet there

459-816: The linguistic ancestor of all modern Polynesian languages. After that period of shared development, the Proto-Polynesian society split into several descendant populations, as Polynesian navigators scattered around various archipelagoes across the Pacific – some travelling westwards to already populated areas , others navigating eastwards and settling in new territories ( Society Islands , Marquesas , Hawaii , New Zealand , Rapa Nui , etc.). Still today, Polynesian languages show strong similarity, particularly cognate words in their vocabulary; this includes culturally important words such as tapu , ariki , motu , fenua , kava , and tapa as well as * sawaiki ,

486-506: The long assumption of a Samoan homeland for the origins of East Polynesian. Wilson named this new group "Ellicean" after the pre-independence name of Tuvalu and presented evidence for subgroups within that overarching category. Marck, in 2000, was able to offer some support for some aspects of Wilson's suggestion through comparisons of shared sporadic (irregular, unexpected) sound changes, e. g., Proto-Polynesian and Proto-Nuclear-Polynesian *mafu 'to heal' becoming Proto-Ellicean *mafo. This

513-416: The missionaries, and the people had learned to read and write without marking vowel length or the glottal stop . This situation persists in many languages. Despite efforts at reform by local academies, the general conservative resistance to orthographic change has led to varying results in Polynesian languages, and several writing variants co-exist. The most common method, however, uses a macron to indicate

540-631: The most outlier cultures is the Solomon Islands, with seven (listed from north to south): Ontong Java (Luangiua), Sikaiana (the Stewart Islands ), Vaeakau-Taumako (the Duff Islands and Reef Islands ), Rennell and Bellona in the southwest, and Anuta and Tikopia in the southeast. Vanuatu has three: Emae , Mele (now known as Ifira-Mele) and Futuna-Aniwa (on Futuna Island and Aniwa Island ). Futuna recognizes links with Tonga. New Caledonia has one Polynesian outlier culture on Ouvéa in

567-548: The mythical homeland for some of the cultures. Polynesian languages fall into two branches, Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian . Tongan and Niuean constitute the Tongic branch; all the rest are part of the Nuclear Polynesian branch. The contemporary classification of the Polynesian languages began with certain observations by Andrew Pawley in 1966 based on shared innovations in phonology, vocabulary and grammar showing that

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594-958: The plural pronouns are: mātou (we, exc), tātou (we, inc), koutou (you), rātou (they). The difference between exclusive and inclusive is the treatment of the person addressed. Mātou refers to the speaker and others but not the person or persons spoken to (i.e., "I and some others, but not you"), while tātou refers to the speaker, the person or persons spoken to, and everyone else (i.e., "You and I and others"). Many Polynesian languages distinguish two possessives . The a-possessives (as they contain that letter in most cases), also known as subjective possessives, refer to possessions that must be acquired by one's own action ( alienable possession ). The o-possessives or objective possessives refer to possessions that are fixed to someone, unchangeable, and do not necessitate any action on one's part but upon which actions can still be performed by others ( inalienable possession ). Some words can take either form, often with

621-607: The sense that he was the author, but the Book of Joshua was written by someone else about Joshua. The distinction between one's birth village and one's current residence village can be made similarly. Numerals: Written Polynesian languages use orthography based on Latin script . Most Polynesian languages have five vowel qualities , corresponding roughly to those written i, e, a, o, u in classical Latin . However, orthographic conventions for phonemes that are not easily encoded in standard Latin script had to develop over time. Influenced by

648-478: The traditions of orthographies of languages they were familiar with, the missionaries who first developed orthographies for unwritten Polynesian languages did not explicitly mark phonemic vowel length or the glottal stop . By the time that linguists trained in more modern methods made their way to the Pacific, at least for the major languages, the Bible was already printed according to the orthographic system developed by

675-480: Was equally distant from both Tongan and Samoan. Pawley published another study in 1967. It began the process of extracting relationships from Polynesian languages on small islands in Melanesia, the " Polynesian Outliers ", whose languages Pawley was able to trace to East Futuna in the case of those farther south and perhaps to Samoa itself in the case of those more to the north. Except for some minor differentiation of

702-733: Was made possible by the massive Polynesian language comparative lexicon ("Pollex" – with reconstructions) of Biggs and Clark. Partly because Polynesian languages split from one another comparatively recently, many words in these languages remain similar to corresponding words in others. The table below demonstrates this with the words for 'sky', 'north wind', 'woman', 'house' and 'parent' in a representative selection of languages: Tongan ; Niuean ; Samoan ; Sikaiana ; Takuu ; North Marquesan ; South Marquesan ; Mangarevan ; Hawaiian ; Rapanui language ; Tahitian ; Māori and Cook Islands Māori (Rarotongan). Certain regular correspondences can be noted between different Polynesian languages. For example,

729-452: Was only settled in the 18th century. The region commonly termed " Polynesia " includes thousands of islands, most of them arranged in a rough triangle bounded by Hawaii , Easter Island , and New Zealand . Outside this Polynesian Triangle , in areas commonly designated Micronesia and Melanesia , lie about two dozen islands, most of them small and remote, whose inhabitants speak Polynesian languages . These islands are collectively termed

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