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Tongan (lea fakatonga) is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga . It has 100,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga . It is a VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) language. Related languages Tongan is one of the many tongues in the Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages, along with Hawaiian , Māori , Sāmoan and Tahitian , for example. Together with Niuean , it forms the Tongic subgroup of Polynesian. Assuming that the Polynesian languages have developed from a (real or imaginary) ancient language referred to as Proto-Polynesian , it seems that in Tongic the phonology has changed the least. 1. Tongan has preserved all the consonants like the 'k' and 'ŋ' and 'f', while at least one of them has disappeared in most other Polynesian languages, being replaced by a glottal stop, and of the remainder, some may have changed further (t->k, f->h or v or w, ŋ->n). Examples: 'ŋ': Tongan-tangata (man), Hawaiian-kanaka, Sāmoan-tagata, Tahitian-taata, New Zealand Māori-tangata, Cook Islands Māori-tangata, Rapa Nui-tangata; 'k': Tongan-puaka (pig), New Zealand Māori-poaka, Cook Islands Māori-puaka, others-puaa; 'f': Tongan-fafine (women), Māori-wahine, Rarotonga-vaine. The last change represents a historical change between Western Polynesian languages (such as Tongan) and Eastern Polynesian languages (such as New Zealand Māori). The last change is becomes [wah . New Zealand Māori also preserves proto-Polynesian except before back vowels [o and where it has changed in to [h . 2. Tongan does have a glottal stop too, but this is an original one, disappeared in nearly all other languages. However, one Eastern Polynesian language, Rapa Nui, has also managed to retain the original glottal stop in some words. Examples: Tonga-tuu (stand), Rapa Nui-tuu, elsewhere-tū (Tahitian being the exception, with ti'a); Tonga-hāele (go), Tahitian, Māori-haere, Hawaiian-hele. 3. The 'r' and 'l' were distinct consonants in proto-polynesian, as they are still in Fijian, but either they all merged into 'r', as in most east-polynesian languages, or 'l' as in most west-polynesian. However Tongan has preserved the 'l' but lost the 'r'. Examples: Fijian-rua (2), Tongan-ua, Sāmoan-lua, Tahitian-rua; Fijian-tolu (3), Tongan-tolu, Sāmoan-tolu, Tahitian-toru. The loss of the 'r' in Tongan might be quite recent. 'Lua' with the meaning of two might still be found in some archaic texts. Marama (light) became thus maama, and the two successive a's are still pronounced separately, not yet contracted to māma (but see below). On the other hand toro (sugarcane) already has become tō (still tolo in Sāmoan). 4. Tongan is one of the very few Polynesian languages where the so called definitive accent still occurs (see below). Rotuman is another example. Tongan alphabet In the old, missionary Alphabet the Vowels were put first and then followed by the Consonants (a,e,i,o,u,f... etc.) This was still so as of Privy council decision of 1943 on the orthography of the Tongan language. However C.M. Churchward's grammar and dictionary favoured the standard European alphabetical order, and since his time that one has been use exclusively: a as in f''a''ther e as in m''e''t f as in ''f''oot h as in ''h''orse i as in mach''i''ne k as in ''k''ing l as in ''l''ead m as in ''m''an n as in ''n''est ng as in si''ng''er ( IPA : ''ŋ'')(not as in fi''ng''er, likewise Tonga is definitely not to be pronounced as Tonka); written as '''g''' but still pronounced as '''ŋ''' before 1943 o as in n''o''te p as in sto''p'', but softer towards the ''b''; written as '''b''' before 1943 s as in ''s''ee; sometimes written as '''j''' before 1943 (see below) t as in ''t''ime, but slightly softer towards the ''d'' u as in t''u''ne v as in ''v''ine ''fakaua'' ( ), the Glottal Stop , is pronounced like the "break" or "catch" in uh-oh. It should be written with the inverted curly apostrophe ( Unicode 0x02BB) and not with the single quote open or even worse with a mixture of quotes open and quotes close. See also Okina . Note that the above order is strictly followed in a proper dictionary. Therefore ''ngatu'' follows ''nusi'', ''a'' follows ''vunga'' and it also follows ''z'' if foreign words occur. Long vowels come directly after short, which in practice means a do not care situation. The original j used for the sound as in ''ch''in, disappeared in the beginning of the 20th century and became '''s''', merging with the few words already having a pure ''s''. By 1943 for sure there was no use of a''j'' any longer. By consequence many ancient words with ''s'' nowadays are equivalent to those with a ''t'' in other Polynesian languages. For example ''Masisi'' (a star name) and ''Matiti'' in Tokelauan ; ''siale'' ( Gardenia taitensis) and ''tiare'' in Tahitian . This seems to be a natural development, as Proto-Polynesian had no 'j' - the /ti/ phoneme is generally not pronounced the same as /t/ in English, thus, rendering more of a {Link without Title} / {Link without Title} sound in nearly all of the Polynesian languages. Syllabification
Although the acute accent has been available on most personal computers from their early days onwards, when Tongan newspapers started to use computers around 1990 to produce their papers, they were unable to find, or too lazy to remember the proper keystrokes, and it grew into a habit to put the accent after the vowel instead on it: not á but '''a´'''. But as this distance seemed to be too big, a demand arose for Tongan fonts where the acute accent was shifted to the right, a position halfway in between the two extremes above. Most papers still follow this practice. Use of the definitive accent English and many other languages only know 2 types of Articles :
The phenomenon of the definitive accent allows Tongan to have 3 levels of articles, and not only articles, the idea spreads to the Possessives as well.
Divide into 3 types of language There are 3 (or rather 5) languages which consist of
It must be stressed that the term ''language'' here is somewhat a misnomer. It would be the same as saying in English that ''he pissed'' and ''he urinated'' or ''you'' and ''thy'' are different languages. It is just that some particular words, mostely nouns and verbs, can only be used when talking about or to particular persons.
Literature Tongan is primarily a spoken, rather than written, language. Only the Bible , the Book Of Mormon , and a few other books are written in Tongan. There are not enough people who can read Tongan to commercially justify publishing books in the language. Most reading literature available in Tonga is in English. There are a few weekly and monthly magazines in Tongan, but there are no daily newspapers.
Internet Planet Tonga is perhaps the best source for information about Tonga (partly in the Tongan language). External links |