Talk:Tahitian language

Mutiny on the Bounty
The Tahitian language is featured in the famous Mutiny on the Bounty, where the I-charactre is supposed to compose a dictionary of the language. What must we beleive of this story? Was this dictionary actually written, and was the author's name really Roger Biam (or something like that, I don't clearly remember)? If so, I think it would be worth while, even desirable, to name that in the article. Caesarion 18:53, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * It seems that the writers (Nordhoff & Hall) took the original crew list from the Bounty, wiped out one person and replaced him with the fictional Roger Byam. The dictionary must be equally fictional.--Tauʻolunga 00:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Hawaiian is an English word with NO GLOTTAL STOP
I have corrected the article by changing "Hawai`ian" to "Hawaiian". This is an English word. It is not a Hawaiian word, not a Tahitian word, and for Tauolunga's information, it is not a Tongan word either. The glottal stop is not a letter of the English alphabet, and does not belong in standard English orthography. Consensus has been established on the wikipedia discussion page for Hawaiian Language that "Hawai`ian" is INCORRECT. Please pay attention, Mr. Tauolunga, instead of bull-headedly trying to force your own personal POV on everyone else. Agent X 03:39, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Denying Hawai`i is your POV, mister X, miss-writing my name yet another one. And by the way, this is the Tahitian page.
 * Looking on the discussion page of the Hawaiian language, not everybody agrees with you. However considering the already lengthy discussion of this topic I do not think anything will be gained by yet another addition, and as such I shall comply with the consensus. --Tauʻolunga 05:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The article is now formatted in such a way as to make it so that less of the words listed are readable (by me, at least, and I have a few Unicode fonts installed).

I think I will revert formatting if no one has any objections to make it easier to read. The Jade Knight 20:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

ANSWER: I have the same problem, but I do not think it wise to adapt the contents to the browser. Rather the browser should be adapted to the contents, as we all agree (I hope) that the accents are fundamental to the ortography of the language. Also remember that Tahitian is not the only language with this problem. Or do you want to reformat all Polynesian languages? Changing to a larger font size will help. But the main problem seems to me the use of italics. If we do away with them readibility will improve a lot. But then how do we distinguish Tahitian from English? --Tauʻolunga 04:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Using a colour may be an idea. Or is that non-wikipedian? --Tauʻolunga 06:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The only problem I have in reading the article is that whatever is used to represent the glottal stop appears as a box eg. HawaiBOXian and TauBOXolunga - I get the same problem on the Hawaiian Wikipedia. Luckily Māori does not have the glottal stop - except for one dialect. The macrons are fine on my system. There was a proposal recently to eliminate the macron from various articles dealing with Māori subjects on the English wikipedia. This was soundly defeated because the macron is now regarded as the standard way of writing the word Māori in NZ English. Put a proposal forward, and let the majority decide.Kahuroa 21:27, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

There we have something, maybe that was Jade Knight's problem too?: you are using an old browser which has no ʻ modifier letter turned comma, unicode 0x02BB, which is the preferred one for the glottal, and therefore shows as a box. Old MS Windows systems still seem to have that problem. In that case I really would argue that you adapt rather than Wikipedia adapts. After all do we require that Greek, Russian, Japanese, etc etc are written in Latin letters because someone's computer cannot deal with them? --Tauʻolunga 00:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Nowhere did I ask for Wikipedia to adapt anything. It's not a major problem for me. My Windows system is not old. Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180.sp2...etc...etc isn't that archaic either. Kahuroa 18:36, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Ditto. I don't have any display problem when reading the article on the Hawaiian language, either.  I think it's simply a problem with Tauʻolunga's formatting.  The Jade Knight 02:45, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Then please tell me what exactly is your problem. Is it that box, is it the italics, is it something else? Because except for the italics (which never look nice except at large font sizes) I have no problems. --Tauʻolunga 06:19, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Jade Knight - just to clarify, I meant that I get the BOX instead of the glottal stop character when I am accessing the HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE WIKIPEDIA - I have no box when reading the Hawaiian language article on THIS wikipedia. ( I speak Māori and can understand other Polynesian languages which is why I visit the Haw. Wikipedia) Kahuroa 23:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Kahuroa, your problem is the glottal, no more. Same for Jade knight? Windows fonts are known for their still not having the proper glottal, which is unicode 0x02BB this one: ʻ ʻ ʻ ʻ (a box to you?), recommended by unicode and apparently eagerly used in Hawaiʻi. I reckon they all use Macintosh over there, which displays their ʻokina and also supports their months, weekdays, and so on. Elsewhere in Polynesia they are too stupid (like Tonga) or too lazy (elsewhere) to bother. The easiest way out is the apostrophe 0x0027 this one: ' ' ' ' not looking nice. And then having a wordprocessor making it into curly quotes 0x2018 this one: ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ (not a box to you?), but in Tonga always mixed up by 0x2019 this one: ’ ’ ’ ’. Then on the Hawaiʻi page there is a { {okina} } template. I have no idea how it works,    but it shows as the proper 0x02BB on my computer. Does it perhaps appear as 0x2018 on yours? If so, then that will be the solution. --Tauʻolunga 06:17, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Stupid, lazy???? Stunned silence after reading that! Jade Knight asked:" think I will revert formatting if no one has any objections to make it easier to read. " I reply: PLEASE DO! Kahuroa 07:01, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I live in Tonga, have been living in Tahiti, so I know what I say, and will say it again it needed. Of course these words are personal opinion and will not come in the encyclopedia itself. Still you have not answered my question. If you can read that { {okina} } properly, then that is the way to go, and it is a solution we can be all happy with. --Tauʻolunga 22:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * It seems to be working now—if this is because you're using the "Okina" symbol, that would probably be why. The Jade Knight 07:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Everybody happy then. I shall update other pages which I have edited in the same way. --Tauʻolunga 00:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Conseil du Scoutisme polynésien
Can someone render "Conseil du Scoutisme polynésien" and "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Tahitian? Thanks! Chris 14:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

User ty
I have looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_by_language. It would appear that there are no templates like, for Tahitian. :( Chris 06:53, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Name of the language
What's the indigenous name of the languaeg? I'm asking because we call it Reo Tahiti eg. Lonely Planet's South Pacific Phrasebook (ISBN 0-86442-595-3) refers to it as Reo Mā'ohi... Any clues? FreshBreeze 09:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

'Te Reo Tahiti' means 'the language of Tahiti'. 'Te Reo Mā'ohi' would translate something like 'the language of the Polynesian people who live on tahiti' - or the language of the Tahitian people. 'Mā'ohi' is difficult to translate, but roughly means 'Us native people who live in French Polynesia'. Naturally English doesn't have a word for this specific idea... So far as I understand, in usage, both phrases are valid to refer to the language. firstfox 08:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The name is Te Re'o M&#257;'ohi. Te Re'o Tahiti is used by speakers of the language who do not identify as M&#257;'ohi.Maori rahi 04:50, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

French comparison
I'm not a big fan of comparisons of English pronunciations (especially vowels) to a language's inventory, but French is especially problematic. So I took it out. We should cite sources on the phonetic information. Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  00:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Tuamotuan IS NOT Tahitian
The Tuamotuans do not speak Tahitian; they speak Tuamotuan. Try telling the Tuamotuans at www.reko.pf that the language that they are using is Tahitian. However, they do speak Tahitian as a second language, which is considerably different from Tuamotuan. Thus I have edited the main article to reflect this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maori rahi (talk • contribs) 04:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

no velars?
Does Tahitian truly lack velar consonants, or are /t/ and /n/ sometimes pronounced [k] and [ŋ], like we see with Samoan and Hawaiian? kwami (talk) 01:33, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, "pure" Tahitian has no velar consonants; /t/ is never pronounced [k], nor is /n/ ever pronounced [ŋ]. According to the Fare Vana'a (l'Académie Tahitienne) the Gold Standard for classical Tahitian - both in the temporal and qualitative sense - is "Te Bibilia Mo'a ra," (The Holy Bible), whose cover, curiously calls it "TE PARAU A TE ATUA" (THE WORD OF GOD). Both "Te Faufa'a Tahito" (Old Testament) and "Te Faufa'a 'Āpī" (New Testament) contain, respectively, transliterations of Hebrew and Greek words that the translators (Henry Nott, for the greater part) decided ought to be kept rather than translated (including one English, "book," which became [Buka]. This resulted in a plethora of written words containing /b, /d/, /g/, /k/,
 * /l/, /s/, /x/ and /z/. In each case, the consonant was pronounced as the closest Tahitian equivalent, e.g., "buka" (book) is pronounced [puta]; "Abel," [Apera]; "Daniel" [Taniera], "Genesis," [Tenete]; "Lea," [Rea]; "Exodus," [Etoto]; "Shalmaneser," [Talamanetera]; "Zedekiah," [Tetetia]. "America" is [Marite]; "Russia," [Rutia]. What might seem like local violations of the rules of pronunciation, such as [kerā] instead of [terā], [ke reira] rather than [te reira], are remnants of regional dialects (in the two cases cited, Fenua Raro Mata'i - Leeward Islands) that are as old as classical Tahitian. [Btw, my bona fides: I lived in Tahiti from 1972-74; I married a native Vahine Tahiti in 1975 and we speak almost exclusively Tahitian; I lived again in Tahiti with my family from 1994-98, during which time I managed a Translation Office where I translated and interpreted English-Tahitian, Tahitian-English, French-Tahitian, Tahitian-French, English-French and French-English. Hope this is helpful. IhiReo (talk) 09:52, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Expanding from french wikipedia
I have been recently expanding the article with translations from the tahitien language article at fr:wikipedia.teinesaVaii  (talk)  13:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Materials and sources on Tahitian
A Tahitian and English dictionary, with introductory remarks on the Polynesian language, and a short grammar of the Tahitian dialect: with an appendix containing a list of foreign words used in the Tahitian Bible, in commerce, etc., with the sources from whence they have been derived (1851)

https://archive.org/details/tahitianenglishd00davirich

Du dialecte de Tahiti, de celui des îles Marquises, et, en général, de la langue polynésienne, ouvrage qui a remporté, en 1852 (1853)

https://archive.org/details/dudialectedetah00gausgoog

Îles de la Société Tahiti. Considérations géologiques, météorologiques et botaniques sur l'île. État moral actuel des Tahitiens ... Grammaire et petit dictionnaire tahitien (1860)

https://archive.org/details/lesdelasocittah00cuzegoog

Marquesan legends (1930)

https://archive.org/details/marquesanlegends00hand

Rajmaan (talk) 15:01, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Number of speakers
The infobox states there were 46 759 speakers according to the 2012 census. The reference noted of Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013) however doesn't confirm this newer number, but states there were [http://www.ethnologue.com/language/tah 63,000 in French Polynesia (2007 census). Population in all countries then: 68,260.] I don't doubt the newer number, just outline that the reference given is no proof for it. Any sensible reference for the 2012 information would be welcome. --ThomasPusch (talk) 18:27, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Kwamikagami two minutes later just removed the unsourced number of 2012, putting the sourced number of 2007 into the infobox. That's ok with me. --ThomasPusch (talk) 18:35, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Compared to Hawaiian
I chose the tahitian language to review because i want to learn a little bit about the different polynesian cultures. There are a lot of similarities between the tahitian and hawaiian languages, with having almost the same amount of letters in the alphabet, pronouncing the vowels the same. Some of the differences include an addition of “f”, and t, instead of k, and r instead of l. this article is very good as there is a lot of information with the letters, and how they should be pronounced. Also there is examples of sentences with translations, whether it’d be singular or plural to show how the language is spoken. And there is a good use of citing sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism. Kainoasc (talk) 21:28, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Unicodified
In digital docs, written words should use letters for sounds, not punctuation marks, per the coding concepts of Unicode. But, since it's not clear if Tahitian will use a 6-shaped ('okina) or 9-shaped apostrophe, and people are used to a straight apostrophe, I changed everything to a straight apostrophe, which when Unicodified means the saltillo. (Otherwise it's a punctuation mark rather than a letter.) I even used a capital saltillo in a few places, though that might be going overboard. Sub with l.c. if that works better. — kwami (talk) 02:46, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
 * This is a rather odd choice. The Fare Vāna'a (Académie tahitienne) uses either ' U+0027 or ’ U+2019. There’s no reason to assume this should be the bicameral saltillo. This article should either use the ambiguous ' U+0027 like the Fare Vāna'a uses on their online dictionary or use ’ U+2019 like it does in some PDFs or on Graphie et graphies de la langue tahitienne §7. Other conventions, like Lemaître, use ‘ U+2018 (or ʻ U+02BB) but the Fare Vāna'a does not. Even then, there are no conventions that use uppercase straight apostrophe, so ' U+0027 should be used as is if that is the one used. --Moyogo/ (talk) 08:20, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Neither of those would be appropriate for us, because they're punctuation marks, not letters. The first would be Unicodified as the saltillo and the second as the combining apostrophe . There aren't any caps any longer in the article. — kwami (talk) 08:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * This is your interpretation. Please cite a reference that indicates saltillo should be used in this or similar situation. --Moyogo/ (talk) 08:45, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The saltillo characters are encoded for the languages that use strictly (meaning "non ambiuously") straight apostrophe (in particular a bicameral one). The initial proposal to encode a stricly straight apostrophe was rejected, see https://www.unicode.org/alloc/nonapprovals.html, and only the proposal for bicameral strictly straight apostrophe was accepted and added those characters, see L2/06-259R: “The intent is to have a character for glottal stop (other than the glottal stop phonetic symbol) that is unambiguous and will not be confused with apostrophe or quotation marks. [...] The distinction with LATIN SMALL LETTER SALTILLO is that the user communities that developed this character (independently!) have explicitly intended this to be tapered, straight, vertical, and in many cases long, precisely to distinguish it from apostrophes, quotation marks, accents and stress bars.” Tahitian, for Fare Vāna'a and the territorial authority, clearly does not stricly use the straight apostrophe as the curly 9-shape is also in use. --Moyogo/ (talk) 08:56, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The Ministry of Education also uses the straight and 9-shaped apostrophes, see https://www.ebooks.education.pf --Moyogo/ (talk) 10:00, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I’ll replace the  occurences by &amp;#x2019;. There is nothing indicating the strictly straight apostrophe, meaning the saltillo, is the correct character for Tahitian. Both the Fare Vāna'a and the territorial authority use either the ambiguous ' U+0027 or the non ambiguous ’ U+2019. --Moyogo/ (talk) 10:51, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Does Tahitian really use (casing) saltillo rather than a straight letter apostrophe?
Wondering why in Tahitian, saltillo “may be” used, rather than straight letter apostrophe, I’ve edited the Typography section accordingly to provide a full choice.

Consider that Moꞌorea with saltillo becomes MOꞋOREA in uppercase, compared to MOˈOREA with.

The phrase “…it has become natural for writers to use the straight apostrophe for glottal stops, though to avoid the complications caused by substituting punctuation marks for letters in digital documents, the saltillo (ꞌ) may be used” looks okay to me except for the choice of the replacement. Shouldn’t this stay the same size in uppercase?

Thanks for clarification. — Hnvnc (talk) 07:33, 19 August 2021 (UTC) (edited Hnvnc (talk) 01:20, 20 August 2021 (UTC))


 * Yeah, it's relatively uncommon for languages to capitalize a glottal stop, whatever character is used. No evidence there's any casing in Tahitian. All-cap text might be different, but that would be a stylistic choice. — kwami (talk) 08:35, 25 January 2022 (UTC)