| Rapa Nui language | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vananga rapa nui | ||||
| Spoken in | Chile | |||
| Region | Easter Island | |||
| Ethnicity | Rapa Nui people | |||
| Native speakers | up to 4,650 (ethnic Rapa Nui, 2002), or as low as 800 (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Austronesian
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| Writing system | Latin script, possibly formerly rongorongo | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-2 | rap | |||
| ISO 639-3 | rap | |||
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Rapa Nui [ˈɾapa ˈnu.i], also known as Pascuan /ˈpæskjuːən/ or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.
The island is home to a population of just under 4000 and is a special territory of Chile. According to census data,[1] there are about 3700 people on the island and on the Chilean mainland who identify as ethnically Rapa Nui. Census data does not exist on the primary known and spoken languages among these people and there are recent claims that the number of fluent speakers is as low as 800.[2] Rapa Nui is a minority language and many of its adult speakers also speak Spanish; most Rapa Nui children now grow up speaking Spanish and those who do learn Rapa Nui begin learning later in life.[3]
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Rapa Nui has ten consonants and five vowels.
All vowels can be either long or short and are always long when they are stressed in the final position of a word.[4] Most vowel sequences are present, with the exception of *uo. Repetition sequences do not occur except in eee ('yes').[5]
Written Rapa Nui uses the Latin alphabet. The nasal velar consonant /ŋ/ is generally written with the Latin letter ⟨g⟩, but occasionally as ⟨ng⟩. The glottal plosive /ʔ/ is typically written with an ʻ, or frequently with an apostrophe.[6] A special letter, ⟨ġ⟩, is sometimes used to distinguish the Spanish /ɡ/, occurring in introduced terms, from the Rapa Nui /ŋ/.[7]
Syllables in Rapa Nui are CV (consonant-vowel) or V (vowel). There are no consonant clusters or word-final consonants.[5]
The reduplication of whole nouns or syllable parts performs a variety of different functions within Rapa Nui.[8] To describe colours for which there is not a predefined word, the noun for an object of a like colour is duplicated to form an adjective. For example:
Besides forming adjectives from nouns, the reduplication of whole words can indicate a multiple or intensified action. For example:
There are some apparent duplicates forms for which the original form has been lost. For example:
The reduplication of the initial syllable in verbs can indicate plurality of subject or object. In this example the bolded section represents the reduplication of a syllable which indicates the plurality of the subject of a transitive verb:
The reduplication of the final two syllables of a verb indicates plurality or intensity. In this example the bolded section represents the reduplication of two final syllables, indicating intensity or emphasis:
Rapa Nui incorporates a number of loanwords in which constructions such as consonant clusters or word-final consonants occur, though they do not occur naturally in the language. Historically, the practice was to transliterate unfamiliar consonants, insert vowels between clustered consonant sounds and append word-final vowels where necessary.
More recently, loanwords – which come primarily from Spanish – retain their consonant clusters. For example, "litro" (litre).[9]
Rapa Nui is a VSO (verb–subject–object) language.[10] Except where verbs of sensing are used, the object of a verb is marked by the relational particle i.
Where a verb of sensing is used, the subject is marked by the agentive particle e.
Yes/no questions are distinguished from statements chiefly by a particular pattern of intonation. Where there is no expectation of a particular answer, the form remains the same as a statement. A question expecting an agreement is preceded by 'hoki'.[6]
Original rapanui has no conjunctive particles. Copulative, adversative and disjunctive notions are typically communicated by context or clause order. Modern Rapa Nui has almost completely adopted Spanish conjunctions rather than rely on this.[6]
Possession is divided between the alienable and the inalienable. The distinction is marked by a possessive particle inserted before the relevant pronoun.[11]
There are no markers to distinguish between temporary or permanent possession; the nature of objects possessed; or between past, present or future possession.[12]
Ko and ka are exclamatory indicators.[13]
Terms which did not exist in original Rapa Nui were created via compounding:[14]
There is a system for the numerals 1–10 in both Rapa Nui and Tahitian, both of which are used, though all numbers higher than ten are expressed in Tahitian. When counting, all numerals whether Tahitian or Rapanui are preceded by 'ka'. This is not used, however, when using a number in a sentence.[15]
The Rapa Nui language is isolated within Eastern Polynesian, which also includes the Marquesic and Tahitic languages. Within Eastern Polynesian, it is closest to Marquesan morphologically, although its phonology has more in common with New Zealand Māori, as 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, or until recently was, a verb-initial language. Specific Rapa Nui features also include 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.
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).
Very little is known about the Rapa Nui language prior to European contact. The majority of Rapa Nui vocabulary is inherited directly from Proto–Eastern Polynesian. Due to extensive borrowing from Tahitian there now often exist two forms for what was the same word in the early language. For example, Rapa Nui has Tahitian ‘ite alongside original tike‘a for 'to see', both derived from Proto-Eastern Polynesian *kite‘a. There are also hybridized forms of words such as haka‘ite 'to teach', from native haka (causative suffix) and Tahitian ‘ite.
Spanish notes from a 1770 visit to the island record 94 words and terms. Many are clearly Polynesian, but several are not easily recognizable.[16] For example, the numbers from one to ten seemingly have no relation to any known language. They are, with contemporary Rapa Nui words in parenthesis:
It may be that the list is a misunderstanding, and the words not related to numbers at all. The Spanish may have shown Arabic numerals to the islanders who did not understand their meaning, and likened them to some other abstraction. 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.[17]
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 converse with the islanders in general. The British also attempted to record the numerals and were able to record the correct Polynesian words.[16]
In the 1860s the Peruvian slave raids began. It was at this time that Peruvians were experiencing labor shortages and they came to regard the Pacific as a vast source of free labor. Slavers raided islands as far away as Micronesia. But Easter Island was much closer and became a prime target.
In December of 1862 eight Peruvian ships landed their crewmen and between bribery and outright violence they captured some 1000 Easter Islanders, including the king, his son, and the ritual priests (one of the reasons for so many gaps in our knowledge of the ancient ways). It has been estimated that a total of 2000 Easter Islanders were captured over a period of years. Those who survived to arrive in Peru were poorly treated, overworked, and exposed to diseases. Ninety percent of the Rapa Nui died within one or two years of capture.
Eventually the Bishop of Tahiti caused a public outcry and an embarrassed Peru rounded up the few survivors to return them. A shipload headed to Easter Island, but smallpox broke out en route and only 15 arrived to the island. They were put ashore. The resulting smallpox epidemic nearly wiped out the remaining population.
Rapa Nui came under extensive outside influences in the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1860s from neighbouring Polynesian languages such as Tahitian. 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. Fischer argues that this pidgin became the basis for the modern Rapa Nui language when the surviving part of the Rapa Nui immigrants on Mangareva returned to their almost deserted home island.
William J. Thomson, paymaster on the USS Mohican, spent twelve days on Easter Island from 19 to 30 December 1886. Among the data Thomson collected was the Rapa Nui calendar.
Father Sebastian Englert,[18] 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.[19]
Englert recorded vowel length, stress, and glottal stop, but was not always consistent, or perhaps the misprints make it seem so. He indicated vowel length with a circumflex, and stress with an acute accent, but only when it does not occur where expected. The glottal stop /ʔ/ is written as an apostrophe, as it is today, but is often omitted. The velar nasal /ŋ/ (now "ng") is sometimes transcribed with a "g", but sometimes with a Greek eta, "η", as a graphic approximation of "ŋ".
It is assumed that rongorongo, the undeciphered script of Easter Island, represents the old Rapa Nui language.[20]
The island is under the jurisdiction of Chile and is now home to a number of Chilean continentals most of whom speak only Spanish. The influence of the Spanish language is noticeable in modern Rapa Nui speech. As fewer children learn to speak Rapa Nui at an early age, their superior knowledge of Spanish affects the 'passive knowledge' they have of Rapa Nui. A version of Rapa Nui interspersed with Spanish nouns, verbs and adjectives has become a popular form of casual speech.[21][22] The most well integrated borrowings are the Spanish conjunctions o (or), pero (but) and y (and).[23] Spanish words such as problema (problem), which was once rendered as poroborema, are now often integrated with minimal or no change.[24]
Spanish words are still often used within Rapa Nui grammatical rules, though some word order changes are occurring and it is argued that Rapa Nui may be undergoing a shift from VSO to the Spanish SVO. This example sentence was recorded first in 1948 and again in 2001 and its expression has changed from VSO to SVO.[25]
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