Wednesday, December 6, 2017

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 19th 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:
[3] Paulus Kieviet: A grammar of Rapa Nui http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/124

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