Polynesian languages

The Polynesian languages are a special group of languages that belong to the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, which makes up 7 percent of all Oceanic languages and 3 percent of the entire Austronesian family. Half of these languages are spoken in the area known as the Polynesian triangle, while the other half, called Polynesian outliers, are spoken in places like Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Some of the most well-known Polynesian languages are Samoan, Tongan, Tahitian, Māori, and Hawaiian.

The people who first spoke these languages were Lapita navigators. They settled in Tonga and Samoa about 3,000 years ago. Over about 1,000 years, these people developed a common language called Proto-Polynesian, which is the ancestor of all modern Polynesian languages. After this time, Polynesian navigators traveled to many islands across the Pacific Ocean, settling in places like the Society Islands, Marquesas, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Rapa Nui.

Even today, these languages share many similar words. Important cultural words like tapu, ariki, motu, fenua, kava, and tapa are found in many Polynesian languages. There is also a word, Hawaiki (from _sawaiki_), that is thought to be the mythical homeland of some Polynesian cultures.

Internal classification

Polynesian languages are grouped into two main branches: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian. The Tongic branch includes Tongan and Niuean languages. The Nuclear Polynesian branch includes many other languages spoken across different islands.

The study of these languages started with observations in 1966 that showed East Polynesian languages were closer to Samoan than to Tongan. This led to the names "Tongic" for Tongan and Niuean, and "Nuclear Polynesian" for the rest. Later studies helped organize the languages spoken on small islands in areas like Melanesia, called Polynesian Outliers. These languages trace back to places like East Futuna or Samoa. Further research in the 1980s and 2000s helped organize these languages into groups like Ellicean, based on shared sounds and words.

Because these languages separated only relatively recently and have had lots of contact over centuries, many words stay similar across different Polynesian languages. For example, words for "sky," "north wind," "woman," "house," and "parent" have clear matches between languages like Tongan, Niuean, Samoan, and others. Some sounds also change in predictable ways between languages, like how certain letters in Māori match different letters in Hawaiian. These similarities sometimes let speakers from different islands understand each other, though some languages change more due to special rules like avoiding certain names.

When Europeans arrived in the late 1800s, they created a simple trade language mixing parts of Tahitian, Māori, and Hawaiian. Many Polynesian languages lost speakers to European languages like English, but recently, languages like Māori and Hawaiian are becoming more popular again.

Grammatical characteristics

Polynesian languages have special ways to talk about "you," "me," and "them." They use three types of numbers for these words: singular (just one person), dual (two people), and plural (three or more people). For example, in the Māori language, ia means "he" or "she," rāua means "they two," and rātou means "they" for three or more people.

Many Polynesian languages also have two ways to show ownership. One way is for things you can get or change, like a toy you bought. The other way is for things that belong to you and can't be taken away easily, like your family. For example, in Samoan, the word susu can mean "her breast" or "her breastmilk," depending on which way of ownership is used.

Orthography

Polynesian languages write using the Latin alphabet. Most of these languages have five main vowel sounds, written as i, e, a, o, u. Early writers, often missionaries, created ways to write these languages without marking certain sounds like long vowels or pauses between sounds. Even today, many Polynesian languages still use these older writing styles.

Some languages now use special marks above vowels to show long sounds, like ā for a longer “a” sound. To show a pause between sounds, an apostrophe is often used, such as in ⟨'a⟩. In Hawaiʻian, this pause is called an ʻokina. The island of Rapa Nui once had its own writing system called Rongorongo, but we still do not fully understand how to read it.