Tokelauan language

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Tokelauan
Native to	Tokelau
Native speakers	unknown (undated figure of 3,500)^[1] 1,400 in Tokelau (1987)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Polynesian Samoan–Tokelauan Tokelauan
Official status
Official language in	Tokelau
Language codes
ISO 639-2	`tkl`
ISO 639-3	`tkl`

Tokelauan /toʊkəˈlaʊən/^[2] is a Polynesian language closely related to Tuvaluan.

Speakers

It is spoken by about 1,500 people on the atolls of Tokelau, and by the few inhabitants of Swains Island in neighbouring American Samoa. It is a member of the Samoic family of Polynesian languages. It is, alongside English, the official language of Tokelau. In addition to the population of Tokelau, it is spoken by approximately 2,900 Tokelauan expatriates in New Zealand. The language is currently being taught privately, and in a few schools, in Brentwood, Essex, UK.^{[citation needed]} Its ISO 639-3 code is tkl.

Affinities with other languages

Tokelauan is mutually intelligible with Tuvaluan, the main language of the neighbouring island realm of Tuvalu, and uses Samoan literature. It also has marked similarities to the Niuafo'ou language of Tonga.

Tokelauan is written in the Latin script, albeit only using 15 letters: a, e, i, o, u, f, g, k, l, m, n, p, h, t, and v. This consists of 5 vowels: a (pronounced: /a/), e (pronounced: /e/), i (pronounced: /i/), o (pronounced: /o/) and u (pronounced: /u/); and 10 consonants: f, g, k, l, m, n, p, h, t, v.

Loimata Iupati, Tokelau's resident Director of Education, has stated that he is in the process of translating the Bible from English into Tokelauan.

Phrases

Tokelauan	English
Fanatu au là?	Shall I come too?
Ko toku nena e i Nukunonu.	My grandmother lives in Nukunonu.
Malo ni, ea mai koe?	Hello, how are you?
E hēai ni vakalele i Tokelau.	There are no airplanes in Tokelau.

References

↑ Tokelauan reference at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh

External links

Tokelauan language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

v t e Languages of Oceania

Sovereign states	Australia Cook Islands Fiji Kiribati Marshall Islands Federated States of Micronesia Nauru New Zealand Niue Palau Papua New Guinea Samoa Solomon Islands Tonga Tuvalu Vanuatu

Dependencies and other territories	American Samoa Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Easter Island French Polynesia Guam Hawaii New Caledonia Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Pitcairn Islands Tokelau Wallis and Futuna

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