Easter Island and Its Language - Rapanui

On Rapanui people speak Rapanui. You might argue, if the text rolls on like this, you hardly find any interest to read it. But actually, Rapanui is interesting.

If you think, it’s written in the Rongorongo script. No, at least not nowadays.

It is spoken by only 2500-3500 people, and some might not speak it fluently as they might use more Castellano (Spanish) [1]. Rapanui belongs to the east Polynesian group and is thus related to Tahitian, Rarotongan, Maori, and others. As Easter Island is isolated, there hasn’t been interchange with other members of the groups, except during the 19^th century, when people had been transferred for a time to Tahiti. So, today’s Rapanui has a good deal of loan words from Tahitian.

Rapanui is written in the Latin script 5 vowels: (a, e, i, o, u) and 10 consonants (h, k, m, n, ng, p, r, t, v and ‘ – the glottal stop). Ng is usually written ŋ. [2]

An interesting feature of the Rapanui grammar is the dual [3]. For the first person there exist forms for singular, dual and plural. And moreover dual and plural have distinct forms for inclusion and exclusion. If you are interested in Rapanui Grammar, please read the thesis of Paulus Kieviet. You’ll find lots of examples and an introduction to the island as well the history of the language.

There are hints, that the Spanish language changes Rapanui. The normal word order would be verb, subject, object, but people found a shift to the Spanish (or better Indo-European) word order: subject, verb, object. Here’s an example of two versions of the same phrase:

1.) he ‘aroha, he tatangi ararua (as spoken in 1948)

2.) ararua he ‘aroha he tatangi (as spoken in 2001) [2].

I have looked at words in different Polynesian languages for similarities and dissimilarities. I’m far from compiling a “Very Basic Guide” to Rapanui.  But here are the words I’ve looked up in different dictionaries.

Rapanui	Englisch	Tahitian	Maori	Rarotongan etc.
hare	house	fare	wharenui	‘are’are
henua	Earth, world, land	fenua	ao	‘enua
ʻiorana	hello	ia orana	kia ora	‘aro
ina	no	‘aima	ehee	‘āita
mahina	moon	marama	mahina	marama
maururu	thanks	maaururu	tena koe	'akameitaki
raʻā	sun	raa	ra	raa
rangi	Sky, cloud	ra‘i	rangi [?]	rangi
rivariva	good	maita'i	papai	meitaki
tangata	man	ta'ata	tane	tangata
tapu	Holy, taboo	tapu	tapu	tapu
vai kava	Ocean, lake	moana	moana	moana
vahine	woman	vahine	wahine	va‘ine

Rapanui is interesting and we’ll talk more about the history of this Polynesian language, when we’ll have a closer look at the Kohau Rongorongo.

Links and References:

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapanui_%28Sprache%29 

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapa_Nui_language

[3] Paulus Kieviet: A grammar of Rapa Nui http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/124

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