The Rapa Nui language (also Rapanui) is the Eastern Polynesian language of Easter Island, forming its own subgroup of that classification. Within this group, it shares the most in common with Marquesan morphologically, although its phonology is much closer to that of New Zealand Maori. It is spoken by the Rapa Nui, the inhabitants of Easter Island. ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... The Eastern Polynesian languages are a sub-phylum of the Nuclear Polynesian languages. ... Location of Easter Island. ... Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. ... Māori (or Maori) is a language spoken by the native peoples of New Zealand and the Cook Islands. ... Easter Island and its location Easter Island (Polynesian: Rapa Nui (Great Rapa), Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is an island in the south Pacific Ocean belonging to Chile. ...

Rapa Nui has the distinction of being the only language in Oceania to have been committed to writing prior to the arrival of Christian missionaries in the 17th century, albeit some (including Jared Diamond) believe the idea of writing to have spread there earlier through European contact. The unique (to date undeciphered) pictographic script is called Rongorongo (Rongo-rongo). Oceania is a geographical (often geopolitical) region consisting of numerous countries and territories – mostly islands – in the Pacific Ocean. ... As a noun, Christian is an appellation and moniker deriving from the appellation Christ, which many people associate exclusively with Jesus of Nazareth. ... A missionary is a propagator of religion, often an evangelist or other representative of a religious community who works among those outside of that community. ... Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American nonfiction author, evolutionary biologist, physiologist, and biogeographer. ... Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... Rongorongo script sample Rongorongo (recitation in the Rapa Nui language), one of three scripts of Easter Island, the others being the tau and mama scripts. ...

Together with Marquesic, Rapan and Tahitic, Rapa Nui comprises the whole of the "eastern" Polynesian languages. A Tahitian man brought by Captain James Cook was said to be able to communicate with the locals. Marquesic Languages are a small but historically important subgroup of East Central Polynesian Languages, comprising the Marquesan languages of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, Mangarevan, spoken in the Gambier Islands (also in French Polynesia), Hawaiian in its various forms, and Pukapukan, spoken in Puka-Puka and the Disappointment Islands... Rapan is the language of Rapa, in the Austral Islands of French Polynesia. ... The Tahitic languages are a group of East Central Polynesian languages, a group which also includes Rapan and the Marquesic languages. ... This article refers to the British navigator and cartographer. ...

Features

Rapa Nui has a predominance of vowel sounds, and uses a glottal stop. It is a VSO language. The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... Verb Subject Object—commonly used in its abbreviated form VSO—is a term in linguistic typology. ...

Books

The most important recent book written about the language of Rapa Nui is Verónica du Feu's Rapanui (Descriptive Grammar) (ISBN 0415000114).

External links

• An online Rapa Nui-English/English-Rapa Nui dictionary from Rongorongo.org
• Rapa Nui legends and traditions, both in Rapa Nui and in English, also from Rongorongo.org
• Easter Island Foundation's Rapa Nui Glossary