As Tahitian had no written tradition before the arrival of the Western colonists, the spoken language was first transcribed by missionaries of theLondon Missionary Society in the early 19th century.
When Europeans first arrived inTahiti 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 includingQuirós[6] include attempts to transcribe notable Tahitian words heard during initial interactions with the indigenous people ofMarquesa. Aboardthe Endeavour,Lt. James Cook and the ship's master, Robert Molyneux, transcribed the names of 72 and 55 islands respectively as recited by the Tahitianarioi,Tupaia. Many of these were "non-geographic" or "ghost islands" ofPolynesian mythology and all were transcribed usingphoneticEnglishspelling.[7] In 1797,Protestant missionaries arrived in Tahiti on a British ship calledDuff, captained byJames Wilson. Among the missionaries wasHenry Nott (1774–1844) who learned the Tahitian language and worked withPōmare II, a Tahitian king, and the Welsh missionary,John Davies (1772–1855), to translate theBible into Tahitian. A system of fivevowels and nineconsonants 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.
Tahitian features a very small number ofphonemes: five vowels and nine consonants, not counting the lengthened vowels anddiphthongs. Notably, the consonant inventory lacks any sort of phonemicdorsal consonants.
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 wordtiuno '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 makes a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels; long vowels are marked withmacron ortārava. For example,pāto, meaning 'to pick, to pluck' andpato, 'to break out', are distinguished solely by theirvowel 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 articlete is pronounced with a schwa, as[tə].[10]
Also in rapid speech,/tVt/ sequences aredissimilated to[kVt], sote tāne 'man, male' is pronounced[kətaːne],te peretiteni 'president' becomes[təperekiteni]. Intervening syllables prevent this dissimilation, sote mata 'eye' is never pronounced with a[k].[10]While standard Tahitian only has[k] as a result of dissimilation, the dialects of theLeeward Islands have many cases of[k] corresponding to standard Tahitian[t].[11] For example, inhabitants ofMaupiti pronounce their island's name[maupiki].[10]
Finally there is atoro ʼaʼï, atrema put on thei, but only used inïa when used as areflexive 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 entirelyopen, as is usual in Polynesian languages.[12] If acontent word is composed of a single syllable with a single vowel, its vowel must be long. Thus, every Tahitian content word is at least twomoras long.[13]
Stress is predictable in Tahitian. It always falls on one of the final three syllables of a word, and relies on the distinction betweenheavy and light syllables. Syllables with diphthongs or with long vowels are both considered to beheavy. 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 includemutaʼa 'first',tiaʼa 'shoe',ariʼi '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 isextrametrical, 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', frommanu 'bird' andreva 'leave', is pronounced[ˌmanuˈreva].Tahitian hasreduplication as well. The endings of some verbs can be duplicated in order to add a repetitive sense to the verb. For example,reva becomesrevareva,haʼaviti 'do quickly' becomeshaʼavitiviti, andpīhae 'to tear' becomespīhaehae. 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 thenominalizing suffix-raʼa 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 wordoraraʼa 'life', fromora 'to live' and-raʼa, is pronounced with antepenultimate stress.[19]
Prefixes added to a root word do not carry primary stress. For example,ʼōrama 'vision', related torama '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 verbtaʼa 'to be understood'. When combined with the causative prefixfaʼa-, it becomesfaʼataʼa, which is stressed on the penultimate syllable.[20]
In former practice, the Tahitian glottal stop (ʼ) used to be seldom written, but today it is commonly spelled out, although often as astraight apostrophe or a curly apostrophe preferred typographically,[citation needed] see below) instead of the turned curly apostrophe used in Hawaiian (locally namedʻokina). 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 ofʼeta andtārava is equal to the usage of such symbols in other Polynesian languages, it is promoted by theAcadémie 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, theAcadémie tahitienne seems to have not made a final decision yet whether theʼeta should appear as a normal letter apostrophe (U+02BCʼMODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE) or a turned letter apostrophe (U+02BBʻMODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA, calledʻokina 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), thesaltillo (U+A78CꞌLATIN SMALL LETTER SALTILLO) may be used instead.[citation needed]
Today, macronized vowels andʼeta are also available on mobile devices, either by default or after installing an application to input vowels with macron as well as theʼeta.
Tahitian is one of the fewAustronesian languages – along with standardSamoan andVolow – that do not have a phoneme/k/ and do not use the letterK.
Au (Vau after "a", "o" or "u") 'I, me':ʼUa ʼamuvau i te iʼa 'I have eaten the fish';E haereau i te farehaapiʼira ānānahi 'I will go to school tomorrow'.
ʼOe 'you':ʼUa ʼamuʼoe i te iʼa 'You have eaten the fish';ʼUa tuʼinoʼoe i tō mātou pereʼoʼo 'You damaged our car'.
ʼŌna/ʼoia 'he, she':ʼUa ʼamuʼōna i te iʼa 'He/she ate the fish';E ahaʼōna i haere mai ai? 'Why is she here/why did she come here?';ʼAitaʼōna i ʼō nei 'He/she is not here'.
Tāua '(inclusive) we/us two':ʼUa ʼamutāua i te iʼa 'We (us two) have eaten the fish';E haeretāua 'Let's go' (literally 'go us two');ʼO tōtāua hoa tēi tae mai 'Our friend has arrived'.
Māua '(exclusive) we/us two':ʼUa ʼamumāua i te iʼa 'We have eaten the fish';E hoʼimāua ʼo Titaua i te fare 'Titaua and I will return/go home';Nōmāua tera fare 'That is our house'.
ʼŌrua 'you two':ʼUa ʼamuʼōrua i te iʼa 'You two ate the fish';A haereʼōrua 'You (two) go';Nāʼōrua teie puta 'This book belongs to both of you'.
Rāua 'they two':ʼUa ʼamurāua i te iʼa 'They (they two) have eaten the fish';Nō hea mairāua? 'Where are they (they two) from?';ʼOrāua ʼo Pā tei faʼaea i te fare 'He/she and Pa stayed home'.
Tātou '(inclusive) we':ʼO vai tātātou e tīaʼi nei? 'Who are we waiting for/expecting?',E ʼore tātātou māʼa e toe 'There won't be any of our food more left'.
Mātou '(exclusive) we, they and I':ʼOmātou ʼo Herenui tei haere mai 'We came with Herenui';ʼUa ʼite mai ʼoe iamātou 'You saw us/you have seen us'.
ʼOutou 'you (plural)':ʼA haere atuʼoutou, e peʼe atu vau 'You (all) go, I will follow';ʼOʼoutou ʼo vai mā tei haere i te tautai? 'Who went fishing with you (all)?'
Rātou 'they/them':ʼUa mārōrātou ia Teina 'They have quarrelled with Teina';Nōrātou te pupu pūai aʼe They have the strongest team.
Typologically, Tahitianword order isVSO (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]
Verbalaspect andmodality are important parts of Tahitian grammar, and are indicated with markers preceding and/or following the invariant verb. Important examples are:
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 most Polynesian languages, the wordtū means 'to stand',[24] but in Tahitian it was replaced bytiʼa, because the formtū was included in the name of kingTū-nui-ʼēʼa-i-te-atua. Likewisefetū ('star' in most Polynesian languages)[25] was replaced byfetiʼa in Tahitian. Althoughnui ('big') still occurs in some compounds, likeTahiti-nui, the usual word israhi (which is a common word inPolynesian languages for 'large'). The termʼēʼa fell into disuse, replaced bypurūmu orporōmu. Currentlyʼēʼa means 'path' whilepurūmu means 'road'.
Tū also had a nickname, Pō-mare (literally means 'night coughing'), under which hisdynasty has become best known. By consequencepō ('night') becameruʼi (currently only used in theBible,pō having become the word commonly in use once again), butmare (literally 'cough') has irreversibly been replaced byhota.[26]
Other examples include:
vai ('water')[27] becamepape as in the names of Papeari, Papenoʼo, Papeʼete
moe ('sleep')[28] becametaʼoto (the original meaning of which was 'to lie down').
Some of the old words are still used on theLeewards.
^abreo Māʼohi 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 calledReo Tahiti (SeeCharpentier & François 2015: 106).
^Thompson, Christina (5 March 2020).Sea People: In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific. Glasgow, Scotland: William Collins. p. 33.ISBN978-0-00-833905-0.
^Thompson, Christina (5 March 2020).Sea People: In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific. Glasgow, Scotland: William Collins. p. 83.ISBN978-0-00-833905-0.
Bickmore, Lee S. (1995). "Refining and Formalizing the Tahitian Stress Placement Algorithm".Oceanic Linguistics.34 (2):410–442.doi:10.2307/3623050.ISSN0029-8115.JSTOR3623050.
