Tuamotuan, Paumotu or Paumotu (Tuamotuan: ' or ') is a
Polynesian language
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 Austron ...
spoken by 4,000 people in the
Tuamotu archipelago
The Tuamotu Archipelago or the Tuamotu Islands (french: Îles Tuamotu, officially ) are a French Polynesian chain of just under 80 islands and atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. They constitute the largest chain of atolls in the world, extendin ...
, with an additional 2,000 speakers in
Tahiti
Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Austr ...
.
The Tuamotu people today refer to their land as Tuamotu, while referring to themselves and their language as Paʻumotu. Paʻumotu is one of six Polynesian languages spoken in French Polynesia, the other five languages being
Tahitian,
Marquesan
The Marquesas Islands (; french: Îles Marquises or ' or '; Marquesan: ' ( North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in th ...
,
Mangarevan
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 Nort ...
,
Rapa, and
Austral.
The Paʻumotu alphabet is based on the Latin script.
History and culture
Little is known regarding the early
history of the Tuamotus. It is believed that they were settled c.
700 AD by people from the
Society Islands
The Society Islands (french: Îles de la Société, officially ''Archipel de la Société;'' ty, Tōtaiete mā) are an archipelago located in the South Pacific Ocean. Politically, they are part of French Polynesia, an overseas country of the F ...
. Europeans first discovered the islands in 1521, when
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East ...
reached them while sailing across the Pacific Ocean. Subsequent explorers visited the islands over the centuries, including
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl KStJ (; 6 October 1914 – 18 April 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in zoology, botany and geography.
Heyerdahl is notable for his ''Kon-Tiki'' expedition in 1947, in which he sailed 8,000&nb ...
, the famous Norwegian ethnographer who sailed the
Kon-Tiki expedition
The ''Kon-Tiki'' expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. The raft was named ''Kon-Tiki'' after the Inca god Viracocha, for ...
across the Pacific in 1947.
The effects of early European visits were marginal as they had no political effects. The language, however, was ultimately affected by the Tahitian language, which was itself affected by European expansion. The eventual arrival of European missionaries in the 19th century also led to
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s, including the creation of new vocabulary terms for the Tuamotuans' new-found faith, and the translation of the Bible into Tuamotuan.
The original
religion of the Tuamotus involved the worship of a higher being,
Kiho-Tumu In the mythology of the Tuamotu archipelago, Kiho-tumu (or Kiho) represents the supreme god (Sykes and Kendall 2003:108).
The Milky Way is said to be his 'sacred ocean' and the dark rift within the Milky Way is referred to as his sacred ship, call ...
or Kiho. Religious chants have been preserved and translated that describe the attributes of Kiho and how he created the world.
In more recent times, the Tuamotus were the site of
French nuclear testing
''Gerboise Bleue'' (; ) was the codename of the first French nuclear test. It was conducted by the Nuclear Experiments Operational Group (GOEN), a unit of the Joint Special Weapons Command on 13 February 1960, at the Saharan Military Experimen ...
on the atolls of
Moruroa
Moruroa (Mururoa, Mururura), also historically known as Aopuni, is an atoll which forms part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is located about southeast of Tahiti. Administratively Moruroa Atoll i ...
and
Fangataufa
Fangataufa (or Fangatafoa) is an uninhabited coral atoll in the eastern part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia. The atoll has been fully-owned by the French state since 1964. From 1966 to 1996 it was used as a nuclear test site by th ...
.
Classification
Paʻumotu is a member of the
Polynesian group of
Oceanic languages
The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...
, itself a subgroup of the
Austronesian family.
Some foreign influence is present.
Geographic spread
![Karta FP Tuamotus isl](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Karta_FP_Tuamotus_isl.PNG)
Paʻumotu is spoken among the atolls of the Tuamotuan Archipelago, which amount to over 60 small islands. Many of the former inhabitants have moved to Tahiti, causing the language to dwindle.
In the 1970s, there were a number of Tuamotuans living in Laie, O'ahu, Hawai'i, as well as other locations on the island of O'ahu. Some were reported to live in California and Florida. There were also a number of people living in New Zealand who were reportedly Tuamotuans, although they came from Tahiti.
Dialects
Paʻumotu has seven dialects or linguistic areas: covering Parata, Vahitu, Maraga, Fagatau, Tapuhoe, Napuka and Mihiro.
[See Charpentier & François (2015).] The native Tuamotuan people are somewhat nomadic, shifting from one atoll to another and thereby creating a wide variety of dialects.
The natives refer to this nomadic tendency as , from the root words (meaning 'to wander around'), (meaning 'to go') and (meaning 'non-restriction').
Paʻumotu is very similar to
Tahitian, and a considerable amount of Tahitianization has affected Paʻumotu.
Primarily due to the political and economical dominance of Tahiti in the region, many Tuamotuans (especially those from the Western atolls) are bilingual, speaking both Paʻumotu and Tahitian.
Many young Tuamotuans who live on atolls nearer to Tahiti speak only Tahitian and no Paʻumotu.
An example is the Paʻumotu use of a velar sound such as ''k'' or ''g'', which in Tahitian-Tuamotuan (a blending of the languages) is rather a glottal stop. For example, the word for 'shark' in Paʻumotu is , but in the blending of the two languages it becomes , dropping the voiced velar nasal consonant ''g''. The same is true with words such as ''/'' and ''/''.
These differences in dialect lead to a split between "Old Tuamotuan" and "New Tuamotuan". Many younger Tuamotuans do not recognize some words that their forebears used, such as the word for 'rain'. Younger Tuamotuans use the word for 'rain' in contemporary Tuamotuan.
Grammar
No systematic grammar has been published on the Tuamotuan language. Current Tahitian-Tuamotuan orthographies are based upon the Tahitian Bible and the Tahitian translation of the Book of Mormon.
An available source for Tuamotuan-English comparatives is ''The cult of Kiho-Tumu'', which contains Tuamotuan religious chants and their English translation.
Phonology
Glottal stop is found in a large number of
Tahitian loanwords. It is also found in
free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such v ...
with and in a number of words shared between Tuamotuan and Tahitian. Epenthetic glottal stop may be found at the beginning of monophthong-initial words.
Short vowels contrast with long vowels and vowel length is thereby phonemic. A number of non-identical vowel pairs appear in Tuamotuan, and long vowels are interpreted as pairs of identical vowels and written by doubling the vowels in all cases.
In non-stressed position, the distinction between long and short may be lost. The position of stress is predictable. Primary stress is on the penultimate vowel before a
juncture
Juncture, in linguistics, is the manner of moving (transition) between two successive syllables in speech. An important type of juncture is the suprasegmental phonemic cue by means of which a listener can distinguish between two otherwise ident ...
, with long vowels counting double and semi-vocalized vowels not counting as vowels. One out of every two or three vowels is stressed.. that is, the minimum domain for assigning stress is two vowels, and the maximum is three. When a long vowel is stressed, the stress falls on the entire vowel, regardless of which mora is penultimate, unless the long vowel is word-final. No more than one unstressed vowel/mora can occur in a row, but, when the first of two vowels is long, there is no stresses mora between them. Morphemes of a single short vowel cannot be stressed.
Vocabulary
Naturally, a lot of similarity between other Polynesian languages can be seen in the vocabulary of Paʻumotu. 'Woman', for example, is , very close to the Hawaiian and Maori . Another example is 'thing', which in Paʻumotu is , and is the same in Samoan and Maori.
Paʻumotu speakers utilize fast deliberate speech, slow deliberate speech, and normal speech patterns. They apply phrase stress, which can be phonemic or morphemic, and primary stress, which is not phonemic.
Endangerment status
According to UNESCO, Paʻumotu is "definitely endangered" Indeed, since before the 1960s, many of the Tuamotu islanders have migrated to Tahiti for education or work opportunities;
this
rural flight
Rural flight (or rural exodus) is the migratory pattern of peoples from rural areas into urban areas. It is urbanization seen from the rural perspective.
In industrializing economies like Britain in the eighteenth century or East Asia in the ...
has strongly contributed to the weakening of Paʻumotu, which is sometimes described as a "
dying language
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide, the deat ...
".
Since the 1950s, the only language used in education in French Polynesia was French. No Tahitian or Tuamotuan is taught in schools.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
Linguistic map of French Polynesia, showing the different dialects of Paʻumotu(from Charpentier & François’ ''Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia'').
* Index cards of plant and animal names in Tuamotuan archived with
Kaipuleohone Kaipuleohone is a digital ethnographic archive that houses audio and visual files, photographs, as well as hundreds of textual material such as notes, dictionaries, and transcriptions relating to small and endangered languages. The archive is stored ...
(
PA1-020,
PA1-021)
{{Languages of French Polynesia
Languages of French Polynesia
Tahitic languages
Tuamotus