Tongan (lea fakatonga) is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 100,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) language. The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ... Tonga can refer to four different languages: Tonga language (Zambia) (ISO 639-2: bnt; SIL: TOI; ISO/DIS 639-3: toi) — a Bantu language spoken in Zambia and Zimbabwe Tonga language (Malawi) (ISO 639-2: tog; SIL: TOG; ISO/DIS 639-3: tog) — a Bantu language spoken in Malawi Tonga... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages used by some 351 million speakers. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: it is patent nonsense. ... The family of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages is a subgroup of the Central Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages. ... The Oceanic languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, containing approximately 450 languages. ... The family of Central-Eastern Oceanic languages is a subgroup of the Oceanic languages. ... The family of Remote Oceanic languages is a subgroup of the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages. ... The family of Central Pacific languages is a subgroup of the Remote Oceanic languages. ... The family of East Fijian-Polynesian languages is a subgroup of the Central Pacific languages. ... The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ... Tongic is a subgroup of the Polynesian languages. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ... A national language is a language (or language variant, i. ... Verb Subject Object—commonly used in its abbreviated form VSO—is a term in linguistic typology. ...

Related languages

Tongan is one of the many languages in the Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages, along with Hawaiʻian, Māori, Sāmoan and Tahitian, for example. Together with Niuean, it forms the Tongic subgroup of Polynesian. By comparing Tongic to the other subgroup, Nuclear Polynesian, it is possible to reconstruct the phonology of Proto-Polynesian, the theoretical source of the Polynesian languages. The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ... The Hawaiian language is an Austronesian language that takes its name from HawaiÊ»i, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. ... Māori (or Maori) is a language spoken by the native peoples of New Zealand and the Cook Islands. ... The Sāmoan or Samoan language is the traditional language of Samoa and American Samoa and is an official language in both political bodies. ... Tahitian, a Tahitic language, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia (along with French). ... Tongic is a subgroup of the Polynesian languages. ... Nuclear Polynesian refers to those languages comprising the Samoic the Eastern Polynesian branches of the Polynesian group of Austronesian languages. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

Tongan is unusual among Polynesian languages in that it has a so-called definitive accent. Like all Polynesian languages, Tongan has adapted the phonological system of proto-Polynesian.

1. Tongan has retained the original proto-Polynesian *h, but has merged it with the original *s as /h/. (The /s/ found in modern Tongan derives from *t before high front vowels). Most Polynesian languages have lost the original proto-Polynesian glottal stop /q/; however, it has been retained in Tongan and a few other languages including Rapa Nui.^[1]
2. In proto-Polynesian, *r and *l were distinct phonemes, but in most Polynesian languages they have merged, represented orthographically as r in most East Polynesian languages, and as l most West Polynesian languages. However, the distinction can be reconstructed because Tongan kept the *l but lost the *r.^[2]

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Sāmoan or Samoan language is the traditional language of Samoa and American Samoa and is an official language in both political bodies. ... The Rapa Nui language (also Rapanui) is the Eastern Polynesian language of Easter Island, forming its own subgroup of that classification. ... Tahitian, a Tahitic language, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia (along with French). ... Māori or Te Reo Māori, commonly shortened to Te Reo (literally the language) is an official language of New Zealand. ... The Cook Islands Māori also called Maori Kuki Airani became an official language of the Cook Islands in 2003 (1). ... The Hawaiian language is an Austronesian language that takes its name from Hawaiʻi, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

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 the 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 in use exclusively: ABCs redirects here, for the Alien Big Cats, see British big cats. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... See also consonance in music. ... A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically in a monarchy. ...

• a - /a/
• e - /e/
• f - /f/
• h - /h/
• i - /i/
• k - /k/
• l - /l/
• m - /m/
• n - /n/
• ng - /ŋ/ (written as g but still pronounced as [ŋ] (as in Samoan) before 1943}
• o - /o/
• p - /p/ unaspirated; written as b before 1943
• s - /s/ sometimes written as j before 1943 (see below)
• t - /t/ unaspirated
• u - /u/
• v - /v/
• ʻ(fakauʻa) - /ʔ/ the glottal stop. It should be written with the inverted curly apostrophe (unicode 0x02BB) and not with the single quote open or with a mixture of quotes open and quotes close. See also ʻokina.

Note that the above order is strictly followed in proper dictionaries. Therefore ngatu follows nusi, ʻa follows vunga and it also follows z if foreign words occur. Words with long vowels come directly after those with short vowels. Improper wordlists may or may not follow these rules. (For example the Tonga telephone directory for years now ignores all rules.) The original j, used for /ʧ/, disappeared in the beginning of the 20th century, merging with /s/. By 1943, j was no longer used. Consequently, many words written with s in Tongan are cognate to those with t in other Polynesian languages. For example, Masisi (a star name) in Tongan is cognate with Matiti in Tokelauan; siale (Gardenia taitensis) in Tongan and tiare in Tahitian. This seems to be a natural development, as /ʧ/ in many Polynesian languages derived from Proto-Polynesian /ti/. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Quotation marks or inverted commas (also called quotes and speech marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase or a word. ... The glottal stop is used in many Polynesian languages and known under various names as for instance: // Encoding and displaying the Polynesian glottal Old conventions In plain ASCII the glottal is sometimes represented by the apostrophe character (), ASCII value 39 in decimal and 27 in hexadecimal, which in most fonts... In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ... Moscow phone book, 1930. ... Species See text. ... Tahitian, a Tahitic language, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia (along with French). ...

Syllabification

• Each syllable has exactly one vowel. The number of syllables in a word is exactly equal to the number of vowels it has.

• Long vowels, indicated with a toloi (macron), count as one, but may in some circumstances be split up in two short ones, in which case, they are both written. Toloi are supposed to be written where needed, in practice this may be seldom done.

• Each syllable may have no more than one consonant.

• Consonant combinations are not permitted. The ng is not a consonant combination, since it represents a single sound. As such it can never be split, the proper hyphenation of fakatonga (Tongan) therefore is fa-ka-to-nga, against which normal, English-oriented wordprocessors always sin.

• Each syllable must end in a vowel. All vowels are pronounced, but an i at the end of an utterance is usually unvoiced.

• The fakauʻa is a consonant. It must be followed (and, except at the beginning of a word, preceded) by a vowel. Unlike the glottal stops in many other Polynesian languages texts, the fakauʻa is always written. (Only sometimes before 1943.)

• Stress normally falls on the next to last syllable of a word with two or more syllables; example: móhe (sleep), mohénga (bed). If however, the last vowel is long, it takes the stress; example: kumā (mouse) (stress on the long ā). The stress also shifts to the last vowel if the next word is an enclitic; example: fále (house), falé ni (this house). Finally the stress can shift to the last syllable, including an enclitic, in case of the definitive accent; example: mohengá ((that) particular bed), fale ní (this particular house). It is also here that a long vowel can be split into two short ones; example: pō (night), poó ni (this night), pō ní (this particular night). Or the opposite: maáma (light), māmá ni (this light), maama ní (this particular light). Of course, there are some exceptions to the above general rules. The stress accent is normally not written, except where it is to indicate the definitive accent or fakamamafa. But here, too, people often neglect to write it, only using it when the proper stress cannot be easily derived from the context.

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 failed to enter, 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. A macron, from Greek (makros) meaning large, is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. ... Ng is also considered a single character in the Maori and Filipino languages. ... A hyphen ( - ) is a punctuation mark. ... In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ... The acute accent (   ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ...

Use of the definitive accent

English and many other languages only provide two article types: An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ...

• the indefinite (a) and
• the definite (the).

The phenomenon of the definitive accent allows Tongan to have three article levels, and not only articles, the idea spreads to the possessives as well. A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. ...

• the indefinite accent ha. Example: ko ha pālangi ('a white person', or any other person from somewhere other than Tonga)
• the semi-definite accent (h)e. Example: ko e pālangi ('the white person' in the sense that the person does not belong to some other race, but still rather 'a white person' if there are several of them)
• the definite accent (h)e with the shifted ultimate stress. Example: ko e pālangí ('the white person', that particular person there and no one else).

Registers

There are three registers which consist of In linguistics, a register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. ...

• ordinary words (the normal language)
• polite words
• honorific words (the language for the chiefs)
• regal words (the language for the king)
• derogatory words

For example, the phrase "Come and eat!" translates to::

• ordinary: haʻu 'o kai (come and eat!); Friends, family members and so forth may say this to each other when invited for dinner.
• polite: meʻatokoni (food, or more precisely: meʻa-tokoni: food-thing, i.e. foodstuff); This would be used in serious study books or in more formal situations, rather than the ordinary meʻakai.
• honorific: meʻa mai pea ʻilo (come and eat!); The proper used towards chiefs, particularly the nobles, but it may also be used by an employee towards his boss, or in other similar situations. When talking about chiefs, however, it is always used, even if they are not actually present, but in other situations only on formal occasions. A complication to the beginning student of Tongan is that such words very often also have an alternative meaning in the ordinary register: meʻa (thing) and ʻilo (know, find).
• regal: hāʻele mai pea taumafa (come and eat!); Used towards the king or God. The same considerations as for the honorific register apply. Hāʻele is one of the regal words which have become the normal word in other Polynesian. Some regal words clearly reflect a Sāmoan origin. History tells that sometimes the Tongans really went to Sāmoa to invent a new regal word. The Sāmoans, instead gave them words with vulgar meanings in their language, and the Tongans, not knowing that, used them to their king. ^{[citation needed]} Example 1: māimoa = labour of the king, either physical or mental (like the poems of Queen Sālote) from the Sāmoan maʻimoa = chicken illness, meaning: insane.^{[citation needed]} Example 2: lakoifie = good health of the king, probably from the Fijian lako-i-vē = walk to where?^{[citation needed]}
• derogatory: mama (eat!); Words which normally would be used for the pigs. The word mama means "to chew" (along with various other meanings) in the ordinary register. A speaker would apply this word to himself and the commoners to make the distance between him and the nobles or the king even larger.

The term vulgar originally meant of the common people, from the Latin vulgus. ... Sālote Tupou III (1900-16 December 1965) was Queen of Tonga from 1918 to 1965. ...

Pronouns

The Tongan language distinguishes 3 numbers: singular, dual, and plural. They appear as the 3 major columns in the tables below. In linguistics, grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. ... The word singular may refer to one of several concepts. ... Common Slavic had a complete singular-dual-plural number system, although the dual paradigms showed considerable syncretism. ... Look up plural in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The Tongan language distinguishes 4 persons: First person exclusive, first person inclusive, second person and third person. They appear as the 4 major rows in the tables below. Exclusive we is a pronoun that indicates the speaker and perhaps other people, but excludes the addressee, as opposed to the inclusive we that includes the addressee. ... Inclusive we is a pronoun that indicates the speaker, the addressee, and perhaps other people, as opposed to the exclusive we that excludes the addressee. ...

This gives us 12 main groups. In every group the pronoun can be subjective (reddish) or objective (greenish). This marks a distinction that has been referred to, in some analyses of other Polynesian languages, as a-possession versus o-possession respectively.^[5] The Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. ...

Cardinal pronouns

The cardinal pronouns are the main personal pronouns which in Tongan can either be preposed (before the verb, light colour) or postposed (after the verb, dark colour). The first are the normal subjective pronouns, the latter the stressed subjective pronouns, which sometimes implies reflexive pronouns, or with kia te in front the objective pronouns. (There are no possessions involved in the cardinal pronouns and therefore no subjective and objective forms to be considered). Personal pronouns are pronouns that refer to objects of a sentence, usually (but not always), people or animals. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... The subjective pronouns are pronouns used as the subject of a sentence; in other words, the initiator or instigator of a verb. ... “Oneself” redirects here. ... An objective pronoun functions as the target of a verb, as distinguished from a subjective pronoun, which is the initiator of a verb. ...

Manatuʻi:

• all the preposed pronouns of one syllable only (ku, u, ma, te, ta, ke, mo, ne, na) are enclitics which never can take the stress, but put it on the vowel in front of them. Example: ʻoku naú versus ʻokú na (not: ʻoku ná).
• first person singular, I uses u after kuo, te, ne, and also ka (becomes kau), pea, mo and ʻo; but uses ou after ʻoku; and uses ku after naʻa.
• first person inclusive (I and you) is of course somewhat a misnomer. The meanings of te and kita can often rendered as one, that is the modesty I.

Examples of use.

• Naʻa ku fehuʻi: I asked
• Naʻe fehuʻi (ʻe) au: I(!) asked (stressed)
• ʻOku ou fehuʻi au: I ask myself
• Te u fehuʻi kia te koe: I shall ask you
• Te ke tali kia te au: You will answer me
• Kapau te te fehuʻi: If one would ask
• Tau ō ki he hulohula?: Are we (all) going to the ball?
• Sinitalela, mau ō ki he hulohula: Cinderella, we go to the ball ->(said the evil stepmother and she went with at least two of her daughters, but not Cinderella)

Another archaic aspect of Tongan is the retention of preposed pronouns.^{[citation needed]} They are used much less frequently in Sāmoan and have completely disappeared in East Polynesian languages, where the pronouns are cognate with the Tongan postposed form minus ki-. (We love you: ʻOku ʻofa kimautolu kia te kimoutolu; Māori: e aroha nei mātou i a koutou). Gustave Dorés illustration for Cendrillon Cinderella (French: Cendrillon) is a popular fairy tale embodying a classic folk tale myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. ...

Possessive pronouns

The possessives for every person and number (1st person plural, 3rd person dual, etc.) can be further divided into normal or ordinary (light colour), emotional (medium colour) and emphatic (bright colour) forms. The latter is rarely used, but the two former are common and further subdivided in definite (saturated colour) and indefinite (greyish colour) forms. A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. ... An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun that does not refer to a specific person, place or thing. ...

Notes:

• the ordinary definite possessives starting with he (in italics) drop this prefix after any word except ʻi, ki, mei, ʻe. Example: ko ʻeku tohi, my book; ʻi heʻeku tohi, in my book.
• all ordinary subjective possessives contain a fakauʻa, all objective do not.
• the emphatic forms are not often used, but if they are, they take the definitive accent from the following words (see below)
• first person inclusive (me and you) is of course somewhat a misnomer. The meanings of heʻete, hoto, etc. can often rendered as one's, that is the modesty me.
• the choice between a subjective or objective possessive is completely determined by the word or phrase it refers to. For example: ko hoʻo tohi, ko ho fale, (it is) your book, your house. *Ko ho tohi, ko hoʻo fale* are just plainly wrong. Some words can take either, but with a difference in meaning: ko ʻene kahoa, his/her garland (which he/she is stringing probably for someone else); ko hono kahoa, his/her garland (which he/she is wearing probably given by someone else).

Examples of use.

• ko haʻaku/haku kahoa: my garland, -> any garland from/for me
• ko ʻeku/hoku kahoa: my garland, it is my garland
• ko ʻeku/hoku kahoá: my garland -> that particular one and no other
• ko heʻete/hoto kahoa: one's garland -> mine in fact, but that is not important
• ko siʻaku kahoa: my cherished garland, -> any cherished garland from/for me
• ko siʻeku/siʻoku kahoa: my cherished garland, it is my cherished garland
• ko haʻakú/hoʻokú kahoa: garland (mine)-> that particular garland is mine(!) and not someone else's at all
• ko homa kahoa: our garlands, -> you and I are wearing them, but not the person we are talking to
• ko hota kahoa: our garlands, -> you and I are wearing them, and I am talking to you

Other pronouns

These are the remainders: the pronomial adjectives (mine), indirect object pronouns or pronomial adverbs (for me) and the adverbial posssessives (as me). The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. ...

Notes:

• the first syllable in all singular pronomial adjectives (in italics) is reduplicated and can be dropped for somewhat less emphasis
• the pronomial adjectves put a stronger emphasis on the possessor than the possessive pronouns do
• the use of the adverbial possessives is rare

Examples of use.

• ko hono valá: it is his/her/its clothing/dress
• ko e vala ʻona: it is his/her/its (!) clothing/dress
• ko e vala ʻoʻona: it is his/her/its (!!!) clothing/dress
• ko hono valá ʻona: it is his/her/its own clothing/dress
• ko hono vala ʻoná: it is his/her/its own clothing/dress; same as previous
• ko hono vala ʻoʻoná: it is his/her/its very own clothing/dress
• ʻoku ʻoʻona ʻa e valá ni: this cloting is his/hers/its
• ʻoku moʻona ʻa e valá: the clothing is for him/her/it
• ʻoange ia moʻono valá: give it (to him/her/it) as his/hers/its clothing

Counting

• noa, taha, ua, tolu, fā, nima, ono, fitu, valu, hiva (0 … 9)
• hongofulu, taha-noa (10), uongofulu, uofulu, ua-noa (20), tolungofulu, tolu-noa (30), … The 'full-style' numbers and 'telephone-style' numbers are equally common in use
• hongofulu ma taha, taha-taha (11), uongofulu ma fā, ua-fā (24), …; exceptions: uo-ua (22), nime-nima (55), hive-hiva (99) The 'telephone-style' numbers are almost exclusively in use
• teau (100), teau taha (101), … teau hongofulu (110), teau-ua-noa (120), uongeau (200), tolungeau (300), … But for more 'complex' numbers: taha-taha-taha (111), … uo-uo-ua (222), fā-valu-ua (482), …
• afe, taha-afe (1000), ua-afe (2000), …
• mano (10000)
• kilu (100000)
• miliona (1000000)

ʻOku fiha ia? (how much (does it cost)?) Paʻanga ʻe ua-nima-noa (T$ 2.50)

In addition there are special, traditional counting systems for fish, coconuts, yams, etc.

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 ^{[citation needed]}. Most reading material available in Tonga is in English ^{[citation needed]}. This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library. ... The Book of Mormon[1] is one of the sacred texts of the Latter Day Saint movement. ...

There are several weekly and monthly magazines in Tongan, but there are no daily newspapers.

Weekly newspapers, some of them twice per week:

• Ko e Kalonikali ʻo Tonga
• Ko e Keleʻa
• Taimi ʻo Tonga
• Talaki
• Ko e Tauʻatāina

Monthly or two-monthly papers, mostly church publications:

• Taumuʻa lelei (Catholic)
• Tohi fanongonongo (Wesleyan)
• Liahona (Latter-Day Saints)
• Tonga star (Tokaikolo)

External links

Tongan language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Planet Tonga
• Ethnologue on Tongan
• Omniglot on Tongan
• Ten Minute Guide to Tongan
• [http://www.brookvale-p.schools.nsw.edu.au/PROJECTS/Dictionary/Main_Menu.html Basic Tongan-English and English-Tongan Dictionary

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1058x1058, 477 KB) aa Wikipedia logo, version 1058px square, no text Wikipedia logo by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); compare Wikipedia File links The following pages link to this file: Arabic language Talk:Anarcho-capitalism Talk:Algorithm Talk:Anno Domini Talk:The... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ...

Notes

1. ^ The glottal stop in most other Polynesian languages are the reflexes of other consonants of proto-Polynesian; for example, the glottal stop of Samoan and Hawaiian is a reflex of the original *k; the glottal stop of Cook Islands Māori represents a merger of the original *f and *s. Tongan does not show changes such as the *t to /k/ and *ŋ to /n/ of Hawaiian; nor has Tongan shifted *f to /h/. Although Tongan, Samoan and other Western Polynesian languages are not affected by a change in Central Eastern Polynesian languages (such as New Zealand Māori) involving the dissimilation of /faf/ to /wah/, Tongan has vowel changes (as seen in monumanu from original manumanu) which are not a feature of other languages.
2. ^ This loss may be quite recent. The word "lua", meaning "two", is still found in some placenames and archaic texts. "Marama" (light) thus became "maama", and the two successive "a"s are still pronounced separately, not yet contracted to "māma". On the other hand "toro" (sugarcane) already has become "tō" (still "tolo" in Sāmoan).
3. ^ Glottal stop is represented as 'q' in reconstructed Proto-Polynesian words.
4. ^ Archaic: the usual word in today's Tahitian is 'piti'.
5. ^ These a and o refer to the characteristic vowel used in those pronouns. In Tongan, however, this distinction is much less clear, and rather a characteristic for the indefinite and definite forms respectively. Use of the a & o terms therefore is not favoured. Further, some linguists equate a-possession with alienable possession and o-possession with inalienable possession.

The Central East Polynesian languages are a sub-phylum of the Eastern Polynesian languages. ... New Zealand Māori can refer to: People of Māori descent New Zealand Māori rugby union team New Zealand Māori rugby league team Category: ...

References

• C.M. Churchward, Tongan grammar. ISBN 0-908717-05-9
• C.M. Churchward, Tongan dictionary