Tonga Languages

Tonga

Languages

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Description

The Tongan language is the official language, along with English. Tongan, a Polynesian language, is closely related to Wallisian (Uvean), Niuean, Hawaiian, and Samoan.

Tongan is an Austronesian language of the Polynesian branch spoken in Tonga. It has around 187,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO (verb–subject–object) language.

Alphabet and Pronunciation

Tongan is written in a subset of the Latin script. In the old, "missionary" alphabet, the order of the letters was modified: the vowels were put first and then followed by the consonants: a, e, i, o, u, etc. That was still so as of the Privy Council decision of 1943 on the orthography of the Tongan language. However, C. M. Churchward's grammar and dictionary favoured the standard European alphabetical order, which, since his time, has been in use exclusively:

Tongan alphabet

Letter	a	e	f	h	i	k	l	m	n	ng	o	p	s	t	u	v	ʻ (fakauʻa)
Pronunciation	/a/	/e/	/f/	/h/	/i/	/k/	/l/	/m/	/n/	/ŋ/1	/o/	/p/2	/s/3	/t/	/u/	/v/	/ʔ/4

Notes:

1. written as g but still pronounced as [ŋ] (as in Samoan) before 1943
2. unaspirated; written as b before 1943
3. sometimes written as j before 1943
4. the glottal stop. It should be written with the modifier letter turned comma and not with the single quote open or with a mixture of quotes open and quotes close.