RAPA NUI LANGUAGE

The 'Rapa Nui language' (also 'Rapanui') is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Rapanui, the inhabitants of Easter Island.

Contents

Old Rapa Nui language

Modern Rapa Nui language

References

External links

Old Rapa Nui language

Very little is known about the now-extinct old Rapa Nui language before Europeans profoundly changed the fate of the island. However, through comparative linguistics, linguists are able to make confident assertions as to how the language may have sounded by comparing grammatical features found in Rapa Nui today to that of other Polynesian languages. They are also able to compare Rapa Nui vocabulary with that of other Polynesian languages to reconstruct Proto-Rapa Nui. For example, the word for 'to speak' kōrero, is found in New Zealand Māori, Cook Islands Māori and Hawaiian ('Ōlelo) thus we are able to assert that in Proto-Rapa Nui, and indeed in Proto-Eastern Polynesian, that the word for 'to talk' was
★ kōrero.
The majority of Rapa Nui vocabulary is inherited directly from Proto-Eastern Polynesian. There some changes in semantics and some uniquely Rapa Nui words but the majority of the vocabulary has cognates elsewhere in Polynesia. This is not the result of borrowing, but of genuine inheritance. Of course due to extensive borrowing from Tahitian there are now exists two forms for what is the same word in the Proto language. For example, Rapa Nui has 'ite (Tahitian - 'to know') and tike'a for 'to see' which in Proto-Eastern Polynesian
★ kiteqa. The
★ t and
★ k in the Rapa Nui form has undergone metathesis while in Tahitian the
★ k has changed to a glottal stop. The final syllable in Tahitian has been lost. There are also hybridized forms of words e.g. haka'ite 'to teach' from haka (causative suffix - inherited from Proto-Polynesian
★ faka) and 'ite (to know - borrowed from Tahitian).
According to the Spanish notes from their 1770 visit to the island, of the 94 recorded words and terms many were Polynesian, but several seemed to be of unrecognizable language. The Spanish also recorded the numbers from one to ten which seemingly have no relation to any known language (contemporary Rapa Nui words in parenthesis):
# cojàna (katahi)
# corena (karua)
# cogojù (katoru)
# quirote (kaha)
# majanà (karima)
# teùto (kaono)
# tejèa (kahitu)
# moroqui (kavau)
# vijoviri (kaiva)
# queromata-paùpaca quacaxixiva (kaangaahuru)
According to some research, the list is a misunderstanding, and the words are not related to numbers at all. It is speculated that the Spanish showed the western numerals to the islanders who did not understand their true meaning, but likened them to some other abstractions. For example, the "moroqui" for number eight (8) would have actually been "moroki", a small fish that is used as a bait, since "8" can look like a simple drawing of a fish.^[1] This initial contact with writing could have resulted in invention of the Rongorongo script.^[2]
Captain James Cook visited the island four years later, and had a Tahitian interpreter with him, who, while recognizing some Polynesian words (up to 17 were written down), was not able to discuss with the islanders in general. The British also attempted to record the numerals and were able to record the correct Polynesian words. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl speculated that there were two different languages spoken on the island, slowly merging.^[3]
Old Rapa Nui was mostly destroyed in the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1860s. While the majority of the population that was taken to work as slaves in the Peruvian mines died of diseases and bad treatment in the 1860s, hundreds of other Easter Islanders who left for Mangareva in the 1870s and 1880s to work as servants or labourers, adopted the local form of Tahitian-Pidgin, which became the basis for the modern Rapa Nui language when the surviving part of the Mangarevan immigrants returned to their almost deserted home island.^[4] The language spoken today on Rapa Nui is genuine Rapa Nui due to the grammatical features which have resulted from isolation and are not shared with other Polynesian languages - this includes the change of use of anaphoric 'ai' to being a post verbal marker as well as the non-usage of any transitive suffixes, thus making it an ergative language and unlike any other Eastern Polynesian language which are accusative.
Father Sebastian Englert,^[5] a German missionary living on Easter Island during 1935-1969, published a partial Rapa Nui-Spanish dictionary in his ''La Tierra de Hotu Matu’a'' in 1948, trying to save what was left of the old language. Despite the many typographical mistakes, the dictionary is valuable, because it provides a wealth of examples which all appear drawn from a real corpus, part oral traditions and legends, part actual conversations.^[6]
It is speculated that Rongorongo the unique, and as yet undeciphered Easter Island script is written in the old Rapa Nui language.^[7]

Modern Rapa Nui language

The modern Rapa Nui language forms its own subgroup within that classification: this means that Rapa Nui is a language isolate within Eastern Polynesian, with all other Eastern Polynesian languages forming Central Eastern Polynesian i.e. (the Marquesic languages, Rapan and the Tahitic languages).
Within Eastern Polynesian, it is closest to Marquesan morphologically, although its phonology has more in common with that of New Zealand Māori, if only because both languages are relatively conservative in retaining consonants lost in other Eastern Polynesian languages.
Like all Polynesian languages, Rapa Nui has relatively few consonants. Uniquely for an Eastern Polynesian language, Rapa Nui has preserved the original glottal stop of Proto-Polynesian. It is a VSO language.
The most important recent book written about the language of Rapa Nui is Verónica du Feu's ''Rapanui (Descriptive Grammar)'' (ISBN 0-415-00011-4).

References

1. See ''Revista Española del Pacífico''. Asociación Española de Estudios del Pacífico (A.E.E.P.). N.º3. Año III. Enero-Diciembre 1993. See also online version.
2. See Fischer.
3. Heyerdahl, Thor. Easter Island - The Mystery Solved. Random House New York 1989.
4. Fischer, Steven Riger. Island at the end of the World - The Turbulent History of Easter Island. Reaktion Books Ltd. 2005. ISBN 1-86189-282-9. See page 114.
5. Online biography of Sebastian Englert as hosted by Minnesota State University.
6. Englert's online dictionary with Spanish translated to English.
7. Speculations on the Rongorongo connection to the Eastern Island language.

External links

★ Rapa Nui legends and traditions, both in Rapa Nui and in English, also from Rongorongo.org

★ Easter Island Foundation's ''Rapa Nui Glossary''

★ Miki Makihara (Queens College), has several papers on contemporary Rapa Nui language and language revival efforts

★