Tah

Also Known As: Tahitian Description: Tahitian, a Tahitic language, spoken by Tahitians, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia (along with French). It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to Rarotongan, New Zealand Māori, and Hawaiian. Typologically, Tahitian word order is VSO (Verb-Subject-Object), which is typical of Polynesian languages. It also features a very small number of phonemes, as further evidence of its linguistic heritage: five vowels and eight consonants not counting the lengthened vowels, diphthongs and the glottal stop. The glottal stop or ’eta is a genuine consonant. (People unfamiliar with Tahitian might mistake it for a punctuation mark.) This is typical of Polynesian languages (compare to the Hawaiian ʻokina and others). However, in Tahitian the glottal stops are seldom written in practice, and if they are, often as a straight apostrophe ' , instead of the curly apostrophe. The native speakers know where to pronounce them and are not taught to write them down. Alphabetical word ordering in dictionaries ignores the existence of glottals. Admittedly, the Tahitian glottal is normally weak, except in a few words like i’a (fish), and easily missed by the untrained ear of..... full article at Wikipedia Location of Tahitian Language Speakers http://llmap.org/languages/tah/static_map.png?width=400&height=300&kilroywashere=.png Rosetta Document Collection Genesis Translation: 1 (download) (browse) Universal Declaration Of Human Rights: 1 (download) (browse)

Overview Main Country: French Polynesia Spoken In: Regions: Oceania ISO 639-1 Code: ty ISO 639-3 Code: tah Classification Taxonomy Central-Eastern Group   Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Group     Oceanic Group       Central-Eastern Oceanic Group         Remote Oceanic Group           Central Pacific Group             East Fijian-Polynesian Group               Polynesian Group                 Nuclear Polynesian Group                   East Nuclear Group                     Central East Group                       Tahitic Group                         Tahitian Language