Social:Tahitian language

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Short description: Language of French Polynesia
Tahitian
Reo Tahiti
Reo MāTemplate:'etaohi
Native toFrench Polynesia
Ethnicity185,000 Tahitians
Native speakers
68,260, 37% of ethnic population (2007 census)[1]
Austronesian
  • Malayo-Polynesian
    • Oceanic
      • Polynesian
        • Eastern Polynesian
          • Tahitic
            • Tahitian
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
 French Polynesia
Language codes
ISO 639-1ty
ISO 639-1tah
ISO 639-3tah
Glottologtahi1242[2]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Tahitian (Tahitian: Reo Tahiti, part of Reo MāTemplate:'etaohi, languages of French Polynesia)[3] is a Polynesian language, spoken mainly on the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It belongs to the Eastern Polynesian group.

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.

Context

Tahitian is the most prominent of the indigenous Polynesian languages spoken in French Polynesia (reo māTemplate:'etaohi).[3][4] The latter also include:[5]

History

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[6] 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.[7] 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.

Phonology

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.

Tahitian consonants
Labial Alveolar Glottal
Plosive p t ʔ
Nasal m n
Fricative f v h
Trill r

There is a five-vowel inventory with vowel length:

Tahitian vowels
Front Central Back
Close i iː u uː
Mid e eː o oː
Open a aː

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.[8]

Next follows a table with all phonemes in more detail.

Tahitian phonemes
letter name pronunciation notes
IPA English
approximation
a /a/, /aː~ɑː/ a: opera, ā: father
e /e/, /eː/ e: late, ē: same but longer
f fā /f/ friend becomes bilabial [ɸ] after o and u
h hē /h/ house becomes [ʃ] (as in English shoe) after i and before o or u
i /i/, /iː/ as in machine may become diphthong ai in some words like rahi
m mō /m/ mouse
n nū /n/ nap
o /o~ɔ/, /oː/ o: nought, ō: same but longer
p pī /p/ sponge (not aspirated)
r rō /r/ - alveolar trill, may also be heard as a flap [ɾ]
t tī /t/ stand (not aspirated)
u /u/, /uː/ u: foot, ū: moo strong lip rounding
v vī /v/ vine becomes bilabial ([β]) after o and u
Template:'eta Template:'etaeta /ʔ/ uh-oh glottal stop

The glottal stop or Template:'etaeta 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.[9]

In rapid speech, the common article te is pronounced with a schwa, as [tə].[10]

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].[10] 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].[11] For example, inhabitants of Maupiti pronounce their island's name [maupiki].[10]

Finally there is a toro Template:'etaaTemplate:'etaï, 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.[12] 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.[13]

Stress

Stress is predictable in Tahitian. It always falls on one of the final three syllables of a word, and relies on the distinction between heavy and light syllables. Syllables with diphthongs or with long vowels are both considered to be heavy. Other syllables are considered to be light. Heavy syllables always bear secondary stress.[14] In general main stress falls on the penultimate syllable in a word. However, if there is a long vowel or diphthong in the last syllable, that syllable receives main stress. If there is a long vowel in the antepenultimate syllable, and the penultimate syllable is light, the antepenultimate syllable receives main stress.[15]

There is another type of words whose stress pattern requires another rule to explain. These include mutaTemplate:'etaa 'first', tiaTemplate:'etaa 'shoe', ariTemplate:'etai 'king', all of which are stressed on the antepenultimate syllable. In all these words, the last two vowels are identical, and are separated by a glottal stop. One can posit that in such words, the last syllable is extrametrical, and does not count towards stress assignment.[16] This extrametricality does not apply in the case of words with only two syllables, which remain stressed on the penultimate syllable.[17]

In compound words, each morpheme's stressed syllable carries secondary stress, and the stressed syllable of the last morpheme carries primary stress. Thus, for example, manureva 'airplane', from manu 'bird' and reva 'leave', is pronounced [ˌmanuˈreva]. Tahitian has reduplication as well. The endings of some verbs can be duplicated in order to add a repetitive sense to the verb. For example, reva becomes revareva, haTemplate:'etaaviti 'do quickly' becomes haTemplate:'etaavitiviti, and pīhae 'to tear' becomes pīhaehae. In reduplicated verbs, the final verb ending bears main stress while the earlier ones bears secondary stress.[18]

When suffixes are added to a word, primary and secondary stresses in the root word are maintained as secondary and tertiary stresses, and a new primary stress is calculated for the word. Tertiary and secondary stress are often merged. The suffix does not always carry main stress. For example, when the nominalizing suffix -raTemplate:'etaa is applied to verbs, regular stress assignment results in the last syllable of the root verb being stressed. This is due to the destressing of the V1 in /V1ʔV2/. To give an example, the word oraraTemplate:'etaa 'life', from ora 'to live' and -raTemplate:'etaa, is pronounced with antepenultimate stress.[19]

Prefixes added to a root word do not carry primary stress. For example, Template:'etaōrama 'vision', related to rama 'vision', is stressed on the second syllable, and not the first, even though it has a long vowel. This can also be seen with the verb taTemplate:'etaa 'to be understood'. When combined with the causative prefix faTemplate:'etaa-, it becomes faTemplate:'etaataTemplate:'etaa, which is stressed on the penultimate syllable.[20]

Typography

Template:'etaEta letter forms
Tahitian ʻeta The ʻeta (currently encoded as the ʻokina), as it appears in the Lucida Sans font.

In former practice, the Tahitian glottal stop (Template:'eta) 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 Template:'etaeta 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.[21] At this moment, the Académie tahitienne seems to have not made a final decision yet whether the Template:'etaeta 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 Template:'etaeta are also available on mobile devices, either by default or after installing an application to input vowels with macron as well as the Template:'etaeta.

Grammar

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.

Personal pronouns

Like many Austronesian languages, Tahitian has separate words for inclusive and exclusive we, and distinguishes singular, dual, and plural.

Singular

Dual

Plural

Word order

Typologically, Tahitian word order is VSO (verb–subject–object), which is typical of Polynesian languages, or verb-attribute-subject for stating verbs/modality (without object). Some examples of word order are:[22]

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Articles

Definite article

The article te is the definite article and means 'the'. In conversation it is also used as an indefinite article for 'a' or 'an'[23] – for example:

  • te fare – 'the house'; te tāne – 'the man'

The plural of the definite article te is te mau – for example:

  • te mau fare – 'the houses'; te mau tāne – 'the men'

te alone (with no plural marking) can also encode an unspecified, generic number – for example:

  • te taTemplate:'etaata – 'the person' [specific singular] or 'people' [generic singular in Tahitian, generic plural in English]

vs.

Indefinite article

E

The indefinite article is e

For example;

The article e also introduces an indefinite common noun.

For example;

  • e taTemplate:'etaata – 'a person'
  • e vahine – 'a woman'
  • e mau vahine – '(many) women'

In contrast, te hōTemplate:'etaē means 'a certain'.

For example;

Template:'etaO

The article Template:'etao is used with proper nouns and pronouns and implies 'it is'.

For example;

Aspect and modality markers

Verbal aspect and modality are important parts of Tahitian grammar, and are indicated with markers preceding and/or following the invariant verb. Important examples are:

  • e: continuous aspect; expresses an ongoing action or state.
    E hīmene Mere i teie pō – lit. [unstarted]will sing Mary tonight, “Mary will sing tonight”
    E tāere ana Template:'etaōna – lit. [unfinished]always is late he, “He is always late”
  • Template:'etaua: expresses a finished action, in a consequent state different from a preceding state. [Template:'etaua does not indicate surprise]
    Template:'etaUa riri au – lit. [finally] angry I, “I am angry”
  • tē ... nei: indicates progressive aspect.
    Tē tanu nei au i te taro – lit. [progressive]planting I [dir. obj. marker] the taro, “I am planting the taro”
  • i ... nei indicates a finished action or a past state.
    Template:'etaUa fānau hia Template:'etaoia i Tahiti nei – lit. [ended]was born she in Tahiti, “She was born in Tahiti”
  • i ... iho nei indicates an action finished in the immediate past.
    I tae mai iho nei Template:'etaōna – lit. [immediate]just came he, “He just came”
  • Template:'etaia indicates a wish, desire, hope, assumption, or condition.
    Template:'etaIa vave mai ! – lit. [hope] hurry you!, “Hurry up!”
  • Template:'etaa indicates a command or obligation.
    Template:'etaA piTemplate:'etao Template:'etaoe i raro ! – “Bend down!”
  • Template:'etaeiaha indicates negative imperative.
    Template:'etaEiaha e parau ! – lit. [negative order] [start] speak! “Don't speak!”
  • Template:'etaāhiri, Template:'etaahani indicates a condition or hypothetical supposition.
    Template:'etaĀhiri te pahī i taTemplate:'etaahuri, Template:'etaua pohe pau roa īa tātou – “If the boat had capsized, we would all be dead”
  • Template:'etaaita expresses negation.
    Template:'etaAita vau e hoTemplate:'etai mai – lit. not I [unstarted]will return, “I will not return”

Taboo names – piTemplate:'etai

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 tūTemplate:Which lang? means 'to stand', but in Tahitian it became tiTemplate:'etaa because the word was included in the name of king Tū-nui-Template:'etaēTemplate:'etaa-i-te-atua. Likewise fetū[what language is this?] ('star') has become in Tahiti fetiTemplate:'etaa and aratū[what language is this?] ('pillar') became aratiTemplate:'etaa. 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 Template:'etaēTemplate:'etaa fell into disuse, replaced by purūmu or porōmu. Currently Template:'etaēTemplate:'etaa 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 ruTemplate:'etai (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.

Other examples include:

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

See also

  • Swadesh list of Tahitian words

Notes

  1. ↑ Tahitian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Tahitian". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/tahi1242. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Reo MāTemplate:'etaohi correspond to "languages of natives from French Polynesia," and may in principle designate any of the seven indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia. The Tahitian language specifically is called Reo Tahiti (See Charpentier & François 2015: 106).
  4. ↑ "Les Langues Polynésiennes". Académie Tahitienne. http://www.farevanaa.pf/arbre.php. 
  5. ↑ Charpentier & François (2015).
  6. ↑ Thompson, Christina (5 March 2020). Sea People: In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific. Glasgow, Scotland: William Collins. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-00-833905-0. 
  7. ↑ Thompson, Christina (5 March 2020). Sea People: In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific. Glasgow, Scotland: William Collins. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-00-833905-0. 
  8. ↑ Bickmore (1995:414)
  9. ↑ Gabillon, Zehra; Alincai, Rodica (2015). "Multilingual primary education initiative in French Polynesia". Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174: 3597. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1077. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01137595/document. Retrieved 19 August 2021. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Blust, Robert (2004). "*t to k: An Austronesian Sound Change Revisited". Oceanic Linguistics 43 (2): 365–410. doi:10.1353/ol.2005.0001. ISSN 0029-8115. 
  11. ↑ Charpentier & François (2015): 93).
  12. ↑ Tryon (1970:5)
  13. ↑ Bickmore (1995:412)
  14. ↑ Bickmore (1995:417)
  15. ↑ Bickmore (1995:420)
  16. ↑ Bickmore (1995:422)
  17. ↑ Bickmore (1995:423)
  18. ↑ Bickmore (1995:423–425)
  19. ↑ Bickmore (1995:425–432)
  20. ↑ Bickmore (1995:433–435)
  21. ↑ "Graphie et graphies de la langue tahitienne". 2003-01-06. http://www.farevanaa.pf/theme_detail.php?id=5. 
  22. ↑ Tryon (1970:32–40)
  23. ↑ Tryon (1970:9)

References

External links



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