Rapa Nui language

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Rapa Nui language Vananga Rapa nui
Spoken in:	Chile
Region:	Easter Island
Total speakers:	4,650 (ethnic Rapa Nui, 2002)
Language family:	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central Eastern Eastern Oceanic Central-Eastern Remote Oceanic Central Pacific East Polynesian Nuclear Polynesian Eastern Polynesian Rapa Nui language
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`rap`
ISO 639-3:	`rap`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

The Rapa Nui language (also Rapanui) is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Rapanui, the inhabitants of Easter Island.

The Rapa Nui language forms its own subgroup within that classification: this means that Rapa Nui on one hand and Central Eastern Polynesian (the Marquesic languages, Rapan and the Tahitic languages) on the other comprise the whole of Eastern Polynesian.

Within Eastern Polynesian, it is closest to Marquesan morphologically, although its phonology has more in common with that of New Zealand Māori, if only because both languages are relatively conservative in retaining consonants lost in other Eastern Polynesian languages. A Tahitian man brought by Captain James Cook was said to be able to communicate with the locals.

Rapa Nui has the distinction of being the only language in Oceania to have been committed to writing prior to the arrival of Christian missionaries in the 17th century, albeit some (including Jared Diamond) believe the idea of writing to have spread there earlier through European contact. The unique (to date undeciphered) script is called Rongorongo (Rongo-rongo).

[edit] Features

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 a VSO language.