The Language of Polynesia

Te Ao Hou, November 1964, Page 23

The Language of Polynesia The Polynesian linguistic situation, both historical and contemporary, is reasonably well understood. By the beginning of the Christian era a language called Proto-Polynesian was spoken, most probably in Tonga or Samoa. Proto-Polynesian would not sound particularly strange to the speaker of any contemporary Polynesian language. He would be familiar with its system of five vowels, the total absence of consonant clusters and final consonants, and the rather small inventory of sounds. The almost complete absence of grammatical concordance, and the marking of grammatical categories by particles rather than by inflection would be familiar. And he would recognise much of the vocabulary. After a time a migration took place, and a colony of Proto-Polynesian speakers was set up in Eastern Polynesia, possibly in the Society Islands or the Marquesas. Whether the migration which occasioned this linguistic split, and the other migrations which succeeded it, was planned or accidental, we are not able to say. But it is clear that after a period of some centuries during which each branch developed independently, colonies of western or eastern Proto-Polynesians were established on practically every habitable island and atoll of the triangle demarcated by Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island, and on many small islands far to the west and north of Polynesia proper. Western-Polynesia speaking people settled in Tonga, Samoa, Niue, Futuna and Ellice Islands; Proto-East Polynesian speakers settled all of French Polynesia, Hawaii, Easter Island, the Cooks, and New Zealand. All of these linguistic colonies have developed more or less independently for many centuries. The linguistic picture today is as follows. There are two closely related groups of languages called Eastern Polynesian and Western Polynesian. Any two members of the same group share much basic vocabulary, and there is a considerable degree of mutual intelligibility. If the comparison is made between the two groups, the percentage of basic vocabulary differences is seen to be greater and the degree of mutual intelligibility drops sharply, so that the Maori speaker, for ex-

ample, will understand little Tongan, though he may feel quite at home in Rarotongan. The possibility of setting up sub-groups within Polynesia does not affect the status of the Polynesian group itself, which is clearly set off, by strictly linguistic criteria, from its nearest relatives, Fijiian, Rotuman, and certain languages of New Hebrides, and the Solomons.