Tahitian language

Tahitian (Tahitian: Reo Tahiti, part of Reo Māʼohi, languages of French Polynesia)^[2] is a Polynesian language, spoken mainly on the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It belongs to the Eastern Polynesian group.

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Tahitian
Reo Tahiti Reo Māʼohi
Native to	French Polynesia
Ethnicity	185,000 Tahitians
Native speakers	68,260, 37% of ethnic population (2007 census)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Polynesian Eastern Polynesian Tahitic Tahitian
Official status
Recognised minority language in	French Polynesia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ty
ISO 639-2	tah
ISO 639-3	tah
Glottolog	tahi1242
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As Tahitian had no written tradition before the arrival of the Western colonists, the spoken language was first transcribed by missionaries of the London Missionary Society in the early 19th century.

Tahitian is the most prominent of the indigenous Polynesian languages spoken in French Polynesia (reo māʼohi).^[2][3] The latter also include:^[4]

• Marquesan, spoken by about 8,000 people in the Marquesas Islands, with two sub-divisions, North-Western (ʼeo ʼenana) and South-Eastern (ʼeo ʼenata)
• Paʼumotu (reo paʼumotu), spoken by about 4,000 people in the Tuamotu Islands
• Austral, spoken by about 3,000 people in the Austral Islands
• Rapa, spoken by about 400 people on Rapa Iti
• Raʼivavae, spoken by about 900 people in the Austral Islands
• Mangareva, spoken by about 600 people in the Gambier Islands

When Europeans first arrived in Tahiti at the end of the 18th century, there was no writing system and Tahitian was only a spoken language. Reports by some early European explorers including Quirós^[5] include attempts to transcribe notable Tahitian words heard during initial interactions with the indigenous people of Marquesa. Aboard the Endeavour, Lt. James Cook and the ship's master, Robert Molyneux, transcribed the names of 72 and 55 islands respectively as recited by the Tahitian arioi, Tupaia. Many of these were "non-geographic" or "ghost islands" of Polynesian mythology and all were transcribed using phonetic English spelling.^[6] In 1797, Protestant missionaries arrived in Tahiti on a British ship called Duff, captained by James Wilson. Among the missionaries was Henry Nott (1774–1844) who learned the Tahitian language and worked with Pōmare II, a Tahitian king, and the Welsh missionary, John Davies (1772–1855), to translate the Bible into Tahitian. A system of five vowels and nine consonants was adopted for the Tahitian Bible, which would become the key text by which many Polynesians would learn to read and write. John Davies's spelling book (1810) was the first book to be printed in the Tahitian language. He also published a grammar and a dictionary of that language.

Tahitian features a very small number of phonemes: five vowels and nine consonants, not counting the lengthened vowels and diphthongs. Notably, the consonant inventory lacks any sort of phonemic dorsal consonants.

There is a five-vowel inventory with vowel length:

When two vowels follow each other in a V₁V₂ sequence, they form a diphthong when V₁ is more open, and as a consequence more sonorant, than V₂. An exception to this rule is the sequence /eu/, which never becomes the diphthong [eu̯]. Two vowels with the same sonority are generally pronounced in hiatus, as in [no.ˈe.ma] 'November', but there is some variability. The word tiuno 'June' may be pronounced [ti.ˈu.no], with hiatus, or [ˈtiu̯.no], with a diphthong.^[7]

Next follows a table with all phonemes in more detail.

The glottal stop or ʼeta is a genuine consonant. This is typical of Polynesian languages (compare to the Hawaiian ʻokina and others). See Typography below.

Tahitian makes a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels; long vowels are marked with macron or tārava. For example, pāto, meaning 'to pick, to pluck' and pato, 'to break out', are distinguished solely by their vowel length. However, macrons are seldom written among older people because Tahitian writing was not taught at school until 1981.^[8]

In rapid speech, the common article te is pronounced with a schwa, as [tə].^[9]

Also in rapid speech, /tVt/ sequences are dissimilated to [kVt], so te tāne 'man, male' is pronounced [kə taːne], te peretiteni 'president' becomes [tə perekiteni]. Intervening syllables prevent this dissimilation, so te mata 'eye' is never pronounced with a [k].^[9] While standard Tahitian only has [k] as a result of dissimilation, the dialects of the Leeward Islands have many cases of [k] corresponding to standard Tahitian [t].^[10] For example, inhabitants of Maupiti pronounce their island's name [maupiki].^[9]

Finally there is a toro ʼaʼï, a trema put on the i, but only used in ïa when used as a reflexive pronoun. It does not indicate a different pronunciation. Usage of this diacritic was promoted by academics but has now virtually disappeared, mostly because there is no difference in the quality of the vowel when the trema is used and when the macron is used.

Tahitian syllables are entirely open, as is usual in Polynesian languages.^[11] If a content word is composed of a single syllable with a single vowel, its vowel must be long. Thus, every Tahitian content word is at least two moras long.^[12]

In former practice, the Tahitian glottal stop (ʼ) used to be seldom written, but today it is commonly spelled out, although often as a straight apostrophe or a curly apostrophe preferred typographically ^{[citation needed]}, see below) instead of the turned curly apostrophe used in Hawaiian (locally named ʻokina). Alphabetical word ordering in dictionaries used to ignore the existence of glottal stops. However, academics and scholars now publish text content with due use of glottal stops.

Although the use of ʼeta and tārava is equal to the usage of such symbols in other Polynesian languages, it is promoted by the Académie tahitienne and adopted by the territorial government. There are at least a dozen other ways of applying accents. Some methods are historical and no longer used.^[20] At this moment, the Académie tahitienne seems to have not made a final decision yet whether the ʼeta should appear as a normal letter apostrophe (U+02BC ʼ MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE) or a turned letter apostrophe (U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA, called ʻokina in Hawaiian).

As the ASCII apostrophe (U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE) is the character output when hitting the apostrophe key on a usual French AZERTY keyboard, it has become natural for writers to use the punctuation mark for glottal stops, although to avoid the complications caused by automatic substitution of basic punctuation characters for letters in digital documents, and the confusion with the regular apostrophe used in multilingual texts mixing Tahitian with French (where the apostrophe marks the elision of a final schwa at end of common pronouns, prepositions or particles, and the orthographic suppression of the separating regular space before a word starting by a vowel sound, in order to indicate a single phonemic syllable partly spanning the two words), the saltillo (U+A78C ꞌ LATIN SMALL LETTER SALTILLO) may be used instead.^{[citation needed]}

Today, macronized vowels and ʼeta are also available on mobile devices, either by default or after installing an application to input vowels with macron as well as the ʼeta.

In its morphology, Tahitian relies on the use of "helper words" (such as prepositions, articles, and particles) to encode grammatical relationships, rather than on inflection, as would be typical of European languages. It is a very analytic language, except when it comes to the personal pronouns, which have separate forms for singular, plural and dual numbers.

This section does not cite any sources. (November 2022)

In many parts of Polynesia the name of an important leader was (and sometimes still is) considered sacred (tapu) and was therefore accorded appropriate respect (mana). In order to avoid offense, all words resembling such a name were suppressed and replaced by another term of related meaning until the personage died. If, however, the leader should happen to live to a very great age this temporary substitution could become permanent.

In the rest of Polynesia tū^{[what language is this?]} means 'to stand', but in Tahitian it became tiʼa because the word was included in the name of king Tū-nui-ʼēʼa-i-te-atua. Likewise fetū^{[what language is this?]} ('star') has become in Tahiti fetiʼa and aratū^{[what language is this?]} ('pillar') became aratiʼa. Although nui ('big') still occurs in some compounds, like Tahiti-nui, the usual word is rahi (which is a common word in Polynesian languages for 'large'). The term ʼēʼa fell into disuse, replaced by purūmu or porōmu. Currently ʼēʼa means 'path' while purūmu means 'road'.

Tū also had a nickname, Pō-mare (literally means 'night coughing'), under which his dynasty has become best known. By consequence pō ('night') became ruʼi (currently only used in the Bible, pō having become the word commonly in use once again), but mare (literally 'cough') has irreversibly been replaced by hota.^[23]

Other examples include:

• vai ('water') became pape as in the names of Papeari, Papenoʼo, Papeʼete
• moe ('sleep') became taʼoto (the original meaning of which was 'to lie down').

Some of the old words are still used on the Leewards.

• Swadesh list of Tahitian words