Tokelauan language
Tokelauan (/toʊkəˈlaʊən/)[2] is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and historically by the small population of Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokelauan has a co-official status with English in Tokelau. There are approximately 4,260 speakers of Tokelauan, of whom 2,100 live in New Zealand, 1,400 in Tokelau, and 17 in Swains Island. "Tokelau" means "north-northeast".[3]
Tokelauan
-
Malayo-Polynesian
- Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian?
- Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
- Oceanic
- Central–Eastern Oceanic
- Central Pacific
- East Central Pacific
- Central Pacific
- Central–Eastern Oceanic
- Oceanic
- Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
- Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian?
Loimata Iupati, Tokelau's resident Director of Education, has stated that he is in the process of translating the Bible from English into Tokelauan. While many Tokelau residents are multilingual, Tokelauan was the language of day-to-day affairs in Tokelau until at least the 1990s,[4] and is spoken by 88% of Tokelauan residents.[5] Of the 4600 people who speak the language, 1600 of them live in the three atolls of Tokelau – Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo. Approximately 3000 people in New Zealand speak Tokelauan, and the rest of the known Tokelauan speakers are spread across Australia, Hawaii, and the West Coast of the United States.[6] The Tokelauan language closely resembles its more widely spoken and close genealogical relative, Samoan; the two maintain a degree of mutual intelligibility.[7]
Tokelauan language documentation[edit]
Horatio Hale was the first person to publish a Tokelauan dictionary of sorts, which he did in 1846.[8] Rather than being the accepted definition of dictionary, it was a reference that only contained 214 entries of vocabulary.[8] Hale's publication remained the only published Tokelauan reference until 1969.[8] However, Tokelauan had been instituted into schools in the late 1940s; prior to the publication, there was not much headway made in the teaching of the language.[8] In 1969, the New Zealand Department of Education published D. W. Boardman's Tokelau-English Vocabulary.[8] This second, more advanced reference was a collection of around 1200 vocabulary entries.[8] In the times that passed after the second publication, the necessity of a more detailed and in depth reference to the language for the purpose of education with the Tokelauan community was realized by Hosea Kirifi[8] (who later became the first Tokelau Director of Education) and J. H. Webster. In the year 1975, Kirifi and Webster published the first official precursory Tokelauan dictionary, which contained an estimated 3000 items, called the Tokelau-English Dictionary.[8] This entire movement was based on the fact that the Tokelauan people take a great deal of pride in their language. Tokelauan schools lacked an abundance of resources and materials that could be used to educate their children on the language.[8] It has a high place in their culture,[8] and the revitalization and renewal of the language for their younger generation had eventually reached a point where action had to be taken. One year after the publication of the 1975 Tokelau-English Dictionary, the government approved the installation of Ropati Simona who was to head the Tokelau Dictionary Project. This eventually led to the publication of the first comprehensive Tokelauan dictionary, Tokelau Dictionary by the Office of Tokelau Affairs in 1986.
Tokelauan background[edit]
Tokelau is a dependency of New Zealand and has three main parts, which consist of atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo. Together these three atolls lay roughly about two hundred sixty nautical miles away from Samoa. The three atolls of Tokelau are also known as the Duke of York, Duke of Clarence, and D'Wolf or Bowditch, respectively (on old maps). Together, they are known as The Union Islands, The Union Group, and as the Tokelau Islands.[9] Tokelau's language, Tokelauan, belongs to the Austronesian language family and is considered to be part of the subgroup of Polynesian languages. More than half of the speakers of the Tokelauan language reside in New Zealand, about thirty percent live in either Atafu, Nukuonono, or Fakaofo, and a minority live in Australia (geographically close to New Zealand) and states in the United States that touch the Pacific Ocean (Hawaii and other western states part of the mainland). Since Tokelau lies very close to Samoa, it is common to think that the Tokelauan language has some Samoan language influences, but due to the lack in extensive documentation, it is inaccurate to assume such a thing. Tokelauan was still only considered to be a spoken language up until the 1960s. During the 1960s schools began teaching their peoples how to read and write their own language. Short works were also produced in Tokelauan. Additionally, it was common for adults to be fluent in Samoan and Tokelauan.[6] The Tokelauan language is small, and has always been fairly small, even before the Europeans invaded, because of the limited resources that each atoll had, which limited the number of people that could be supported on each.[10]
Particles[edit]
The particles of the Tokelauan language are ia, a (or ā), a te, and ia te.[8] When describing personal names as well as the names of the month, pronouns (the use here is optional and it is most commonly used when there are words in between the pronoun and verb), and collaborative nouns that describe a group of people working together the most common particle is used.[8] This particle is ia, which is used so long as none of the nouns listed above follow the prepositions e, o, a, or ko.[8] When the subject of a sentence is a locative or name of a place, ia is also used as the particle in those particular, as well as other specific instances. The particle a is used before a person's name as well as the names of months and the particle a te is used before pronouns when these instances are following the prepositions i or ki.[8] If describing a pronoun and using the preposition mai, the article that follows is ia te.[8]
Affinities with other languages[edit]
Tokelauan is mutually intelligible with the Tuvaluan language. Samoan literature is recognised mostly due to the early introduction of Christian Samoan missionaries to which the Samoan language was held as the language of instruction at school and at church.[4] It also has marked similarities to the Niuafo'ou language of Tonga.[15]
Language endangerment[edit]
With fewer than 5000 speakers, the Tokelauan language is endangered. There is a struggle to teach a language that is spoken by only handful of people, when learning a widely known language such as English has a much greater benefit in their society. The heritage language of the community starts to diminish as parents stray away from teaching their children the local language, in hopes that they will succeed in learning the more dominant language, and as Tokelauan speakers intermarry with non-speakers. Older generations of people living in Tokelau speak both Tokelauan and Samoan, but the younger generation, due to the newer schooling system, are apt to speak English rather than Samoan. In a census in 2001 in New Zealand, only 44 percent of the people with a Tokelauan background could hold a conversation in the language, compared to 53 percent in 1996. Comparably, a meager 29 percent of New Zealand-born Tokelauans reported being able to speak the language, compared to the 71 percent born in the three atolls.