Talk:Culture of Tonga/Archive 1

Summer Heights High
This article is on the culture of Tonga. The section on television discuses about how one character from an Australian television show, based and filmed in Australia, comes from Tonga then talks about how the show is being syndicated world wide. This is completely irrelevant to the culture of Tonga and should be removed. --121.45.141.127 (talk) 12:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Untitled
I'm having trouble finding stuff on Tongan Architecture which they are famous for.(mostly stone work) Does anyone have a link I could use?Falphin 17:56, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I would like information on the traditional mourning process of the Tongan people. We have a family of tongans in our neighborhood who has lost a mother/grandmother and their wake period has been going on for over a week. Please fill me in as to what to expect.

Problems with article
There are many problems with this article -- from the uneven writing to the blithe assumption that there IS such a thing as Tongan culture and that it's uniform throughout the islands. I have been intending to rewrite this article for a while, but just haven't had time. I'll do it as soon as I can. Zora 00:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I understand your issues. When I first wrote it, I simply was trying to give it the basic format other culture articles are given. Of course,  their culture isn't completely uniform. Unfortunately, biased statements have since been put into the article as well. Falphin

More edits by Zora
I added more material. Unfortunately, a lot of it doesn't have cites. It's either material I read and absorbed a long time ago, or it's just things I observed while I lived in Tonga for two and a half years. But I don't think it would really be considered "original research", since ANYONE who lived there would have seen the same things. It's just common knowledge. I've left out anything that might be considered theoretical or argumentative. Tau'olunga will correct anything silly, I'm sure. Zora 01:48, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Do not be sure of anything in life. By the way there was a sister Zora, science teacher at `Apifo`ou 20 years ago... --Tauʻolunga 07:24, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Not me. When I was in Tonga I mostly lived in Ha'ateiho and Pukotala, and went by Keleni Kilifitoni. I'm not LDS either :) Zora is just my user. Zora 10:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

research
im goning over to tonga as part of a educatonal assignment with school. however i am having a lot of trouble finding info on even simple things such as traditions, daily life, food, handicrafts etc. if anyone can direct me to a worthwhile source, or even contribute themselves, it would be very much appriciated.

RoNa_CaBiLlO

--Ronacabillo 02:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not going to be as different as you think. Half the Tongan population lives overseas, in places like New Zealand and the US, and there's lots of coming and going. Get a few tourist guides, like the Lonely Planet guide, google for news and pictures, and perhaps take a look at a Tongan newspaper online, the Matangi Tonga, which is partly in English. Wear a shirt in town and don't expect wild nightlife; Tonga is a conservative and religious country. Don't take drugs into Tonga, or you might be facing a long stint in a Tongan prison. Is that enough? Zora 10:15, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Traditional Tongan Weddings
As part of a school assignment,it is required of me to do a thorough investigation on the history of a Tongan wedding.I need to provide relevant info as well as pictures.Any help or suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Tongan weddings
I am currently doing an assignment on Tongan weddings through out the ages, as part of the requirements I am to give specific details on the dress, customs, food etc.. Any help or references will be appreciated.

Religion
The religion section is a little bit messy. According to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more than 40% of the country are members of that faith. That is a far cry from the survey that this article cites. Does anyone know of any other stats on this?Isaac Crumm 10:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm wondering why this info is not being used, or at least referenced, in this section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Tonga   I lived in Tonga for a while in the 1990's.  While they have a good foothold, there's NO WAY 75% of Tongans are mormons. Most Tongans belong to one of the Methodist based churches (many of which I visited); in fact, many of the Tongans looked down upon the LDS'ers.

Rank and language
Haanofonua added a section on rank and language which I moved and completely rewrote. The quote was not documented (WHERE was this quote preserved?) and it referred to a long-past period of Tongan history of which 99.99% of the people reading this article would be ignorant. I deleted the quote and gave a different set of examples of elevated language. I considered adding a section on the use of "te" and "kita" to express humility when giving speeches, but decided that this might be confusing. I could change my mind if others disagree.

Sorry, Haanofonua. Or should that be Hāʻano fonua? I lived on Kauvai, in Pukotala, more than twenty years ago. I went to Hāʻano on schooldays to teach English as a volunteer. (Not Peace Corps; anthropologist.) If you went to school there, you knew me as Keleni Kilifitoni. Zora (talk) 22:41, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Funerals
I deleted some material on Tongan funerals that was not representative of most Tongans, at least as far as I have observed matters. I invited the anonymous editor to contact me if he/she thought I was wrong to delete. Any other editors are of course welcome to comment.

While I was in the article, I added some material re funerals just as an overview, with a link to the article on funerals. Other editors may want to check my summary for accuracy. Zora (talk) 20:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Sabbath
An anon editor added a bit of speculation to the comments on Tongan Sabbath day observance; he/she speculated that this was due to Seventh Day Adventist influence. This is absolutely wrong. The first Methodist missionaries were strict Sabbatarians, as were most 19th century evangelicals. The SDA came much much later. I took out the editorializing re "this will not be abolished soon". Who are we to predict? As the older generation dies and Tonga increasingly becomes a rural outlier of Australia and New Zealand, Oz and Kiwi attitudes towards Sabbatarianism may come to dominate. But we don't KNOW either way. Zora (talk) 18:08, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Pre-contact sexuality
Someone, sometime, had added a slangy comment about the custom of courting over a faikava -- that this was done so that the boys wouldn't feel up the girl. Well, yes, sorta kinda, but that's the wrong way to say it. I restored the gist of a paragraph I wrote long long ago, which someone had deleted, reporting on private meetings in the bush or on the beach, and the pre-marital pregnancies that sometimes ensued. Without that para, the start of the next para, saying that high-born women were held to a higher standard, just doesn't make sense.

I assume that the para re pre-marital sex and pregnancy was deleted because someone found it embarrassing. It's not embarrassing, it's human. Any culture deprecating pre-marital or extra-marital sex has to deal with people who will do it regardless of the penalties. In the case of pre-contact Tonga, these seem to have been slight. In modern-day Tonga, there is more shame, stronger penalties. But people STILL do it :) Folks is folks. Zora (talk) 21:36, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

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