Tahitian Language Services

Tahitian (Reo Tahiti in Tahitian) is an indigenous language spoken mainly in the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to the other indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Mangarevan, and Austral Islands languages. It is also related to the Rarotongan, New Zealand Māori, and Hawaiian languages. Tahitian was first transcribed from the oral spoken language into writing by missionaries of the London Missionary Society in the early 19th century. 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. In 1797, Protestant missionaries arrived in Tahiti on a British ship called the Duff, captained by James Wilson. Among the missionaries was Henry Nott (1774–1844) who learned the Tahitian language and worked with Pomare II, a Tahitian king, to translate the English Bible into Tahitian. A system of 5 vowels and 9 consonants was adopted for the Tahitian Bible which would become the key text by which many Polynesians would learn to read and write. Early writing 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. In 1797, Protestant missionaries arrived in Tahiti on a British ship called the 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, to translate the English Bible into Tahitian. A system of 5 vowels and 9 consonants was adopted for the Tahitian Bible which would become the key text by which many Polynesians would learn to read and write. Alphabet Tahitian features a very small number of phonemes: five vowels and nine consonants, not counting the lengthened vowels and diphthongs. The glottal stop or ‘eta is a genuine consonant. This is typical of Polynesian languages (compare to the Hawaiian ʻokina and others). Glottal stops used to be seldom written in practice but that has changed today, and since they are now common place, they’re often written as a straight apostrophe ‘ , instead of the curly apostrophe used in the Hawaiian language. Alphabetical word ordering in dictionaries used to ignore the existence of glottals. However, Academic and scholars now publish text content with due use of glottal stops. 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 never taught at school until one or two decades ago. Finally there is a toro ’a’ï, 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 due to the fact that there’s not difference in the quality of the vowel when the trema is used and when the macron is used. Although the use of ‘eta and tārava is equal to the usage of such symbols in other Polynesian languages, it is promoted by l’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. This can make usage unclear. See list. At this moment l’Académie Tahitienne seems to have not made a final decision yet whether the ‘eta should appear as a small normal curly comma (’) or a small inverted curly comma (‘). Compare ‘okina. The straight apostrophe (Unicode U+0027) being the default apostrophe displayed when striking the apostrophe key on a usual French AZERTY keyboard, it has become natural for writers to use the straight apostrophe for glottal stops. Further, Tahitian syllables are entirely open, as is usual in Polynesian languages. 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. Today, macronized vowels and ‘eta are also available for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. People can download and install mobile applications to realize the macron on vowels as well as the ‘eta.