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Nuclear Polynesian Languages
Nuclear Polynesian refers to those languages comprising the Samoic and the Eastern Polynesian branches of the Polynesian group of Austronesian languages. The Eastern Polynesian group comprises two major subgroups: Rapa Nui, spoken on Easter Island, and Central-Eastern, which is itself composed of Rapan, and the Marquesic and Tahitic languages. Nuclear Polynesian is differentiated, among Polynesian languages, by its distinguishing characteristics from the Tongic languages spoken in most of Tonga and in Niue. Languages * Samoic ** East Uvean–Niuafo'ou languages **Ellicean languages ** Futunic languages **Pukapuka ** Samoan **Tokelauan * Eastern Polynesian **Rapa Nui ** Central Eastern Polynesian *** Rapa *** Marquesic languages **** Hawaiian ****Marquesan ***** Northern ***** Southern **** Mangerevan ***Tahitic languages **** Austral ****Māori **** Tuamotuan ****Penrhyn **** Rarotongan **** Rakahanga-Manihiki **** Tahitian Alternative classification * Futunic languages *P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polynesia
Polynesia () "many" and νῆσος () "island"), to, Polinisia; mi, Porinihia; haw, Polenekia; fj, Polinisia; sm, Polenisia; rar, Porinetia; ty, Pōrīnetia; tvl, Polenisia; tkl, Polenihia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including language relatedness, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night. The largest country in Polynesia is New Zealand. The term was first used in 1756 by the French writer Charles de Brosses, who originally applied it to all the islands of the Pacific. In 1831, Jules Dumont d'Urville proposed a narrower definition during a lecture at the Geographical Society of Paris. By tradition, the islands located in the southern Pacific have also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Uvean–Niuafo'ou Languages
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that east is the direction where the Sun rises: ''east'' comes from Middle English ''est'', from Old English ''ēast'', which itself comes from the Proto-Germanic *''aus-to-'' or *''austra-'' "east, toward the sunrise", from Proto-Indo-European *aus- "to shine," or "dawn", cognate with Old High German ''*ōstar'' "to the east", Latin ''aurora'' 'dawn', and Greek ''ēōs'' 'dawn, east'. Examples of the same formation in other languages include Latin oriens 'east, sunrise' from orior 'to rise, to originate', Greek ανατολή anatolé 'east' from ἀνατέλλω 'to rise' and Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine'. ''Ēostre'', a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personificatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Māori Language
Māori (), or ('the Māori language'), also known as ('the language'), is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. Closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and Tahitian, it gained recognition as one of New Zealand's official languages in 1987. The number of speakers of the language has declined sharply since 1945, but a Māori-language revitalisation effort has slowed the decline. The 2018 New Zealand census reported that about 186,000 people, or 4.0% of the New Zealand population, could hold a conversation in Māori about everyday things. , 55% of Māori adults reported some knowledge of the language; of these, 64% use Māori at home and around 50,000 people can speak the language "very well" or "well". The Māori language did not have an indigenous writing system. Missionaries arriving from about 1814, such as Thomas Kendall, learned to speak Māori, and introduced the Latin alphabet. In 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austral Language
Austral (''Reo Tuha'a pae'') is an endangered Polynesian language or a dialect continuum that is spoken by approximately 8,000 people (1987). It is spoken only on the Austral Islands and the Society Islands of French Polynesia. The language is also referred to as Tubuai-Rurutu, Tubuai, Rurutu-Tupuai, or Tupuai. In structure, it is similarly compared to Tahitian. History Those who originally spoke Austral were the Tubuaians, the people of Tubuai. The island has been inhabited since at least 1215CE. The first European to visit Tubuai was James Cook in 1777, though he did not land. The next Europeans to arrive were the mutineers of HMS ''Bounty'' in 1789. After establishing a fort, the mutineers degenerated into raiding local villages to kidnap women, and left after two months. Mutineer James Morrison recorded the population of Tubuai as "3000 souls". When Christian missionaries arrived thirty years later, the population had been reduced to just 300 people. One Protestant min ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mangarevan Language
Mangareva, Mangarevan (autonym , ; in French ) is a Polynesian language spoken by about 600 people in the Gambier Islands of French Polynesia (especially the largest island Mangareva) and on the islands of Tahiti and Moorea, located to the North-West of the Gambier Islands, where Mangarevians have emigrated. Vitality At the 2017 census, only 24.8% of the population age 15 and older in the Gambier Islands still reported that Mangarevan was the language they spoke the most at home (down from 38.6% at the 2007 census), while 62.6% reported French as the main language spoken at home (up from 52.3% at the 2007 census), 4.9% reported Tahitian (down from 6.4% in 2007), and 4.6% reported some Chinese dialects (predominantly Hakka) (up from 3.5% in 2007). The ten years between 2007 and 2017, based on official census numbers, have seen a global decline in the number of Mangarevan-speaking adults (i.e. people aged 15 and older who reported that Mangarevan was the language they spoke th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Marquesan Language
Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines.See Charpentier & François (2015). Phonology The most striking feature of the Marquesan languages is their almost universal replacement of the or of other Polynesian languages by a (glottal stop). Like other Polynesian languages, the phonology of Marquesan languages is characterized by a scarcity of consonants and a comparative abundance of vowels. The consonant phonemes are: Of this small number of consonants, is found only in eastern Nuku Hiva (Tai Pi Marquesan), and is found only in South Marquesan dialects. In writing, the phoneme is written , and is written , the okina. Unlike Samoan, the is not an isolated nasal: it is found only in conjunction with a following . So, whereas the Samoan word for 'bay' is , pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Marquesan Language
Marquesan is a collection of Polynesian languages, East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic languages, Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines.See #atlas, Charpentier & François (2015). Phonology The most striking feature of the Marquesan languages is their almost universal replacement of the or of other Polynesian languages by a (glottal stop). Like other Polynesian languages, the phonology of Marquesan languages is characterized by a scarcity of consonants and a comparative abundance of vowels. The consonant phonemes are: Of this small number of consonants, is found only in eastern Nuku Hiva (Tai Pi Marquesan), and is found only in South Marquesan dialects. In writing, the phoneme is written , and is written , the okina. Unlike Samoan language, Samoan, the is not an isolated nasal: it is found only in conjunction w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marquesan Language
Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines.See Charpentier & François (2015). Phonology The most striking feature of the Marquesan languages is their almost universal replacement of the or of other Polynesian languages by a (glottal stop). Like other Polynesian languages, the phonology of Marquesan languages is characterized by a scarcity of consonants and a comparative abundance of vowels. The consonant phonemes are: Of this small number of consonants, is found only in eastern Nuku Hiva (Tai Pi Marquesan), and is found only in South Marquesan dialects. In writing, the phoneme is written , and is written , the okina. Unlike Samoan, the is not an isolated nasal: it is found only in conjunction with a following . So, whereas the Samoan word for 'bay' is , pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hawaiian Language
Hawaiian (', ) is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the US state of Hawaii. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840. For various reasons, including territorial legislation establishing English as the official language in schools, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. Hawaiian was essentially displaced by English on six of seven inhabited islands. In 2001, native speakers of Hawaiian amounted to less than 0.1% of the statewide population. Linguists were unsure if Hawaiian and other endangered languages would survive. Nevertheless, from around 1949 to the present day, there has been a gradual increase in attention to and promotion of the language. Public Hawaiian-langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Eastern Polynesian Languages
The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of 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, the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu. The most prominent Polynesian languages, in number of speakers, are Tahitian, Samoan, Tongan, 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, the linguistic ancestor of all modern Polynesian languages. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tokelauan Language
Tokelauan is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and on Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokelauan has a co-official status with English in Tokelau. There are approximately 4,260 speakers of Tokelauan, of whom 2,100 live in New Zealand, 1,400 in Tokelau, and 17 in Swains Island. "Tokelau" means "north-northeast". Loimata Iupati, Tokelau's resident Director of Education, has stated that he is in the process of translating the Bible from English into Tokelauan. While many Tokelau residents are multilingual, Tokelauan was the language of day-to-day affairs in Tokelau until at least the 1990s, and is spoken by 88% of Tokelauan residents. Of the 4600 people who speak the language, 1600 of them live in the three atolls of Tokelau – Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo. Approximately 3000 people in New Zealand speak Tokelauan, and the rest of the known Tokelauan speakers are spread ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samoan Language
Samoan ( or ; ) is a Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language, alongside English, in both jurisdictions. It is widely spoken across the Pacific region, heavily so in New Zealand and also in Australia and the United States. Among the Polynesian languages, Samoan is the most widely spoken by number of native speakers. Samoan is spoken by approximately 260,000 people in the archipelago and with many Samoans living in diaspora in a number of countries, the total number of speakers worldwide was estimated at 510,000 in 2015. It is the third-most widely spoken language in New Zealand, where 2.2% of the population, 101,900 people, were able to speak it as of 2018. The language is notable for the phonological differences between formal and informal speech as well as a ceremonial form used in Samoan oratory. Cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
