Professional Learning
Whakangūngū
Services
Ratonga
About Us
Mō mātou
Blog
Rangitaki
Contact
Whakapā mai
Educational Leadership
Empowering school leadership
Māori Education & Support
Kaupapa Māori
Pacific-Led Education
Cultural competencies
Languages, Culture & Identity
Learning languages
Back
Mō mātou

About Us

Tui Tuia | Learning Circle empowers Kāhui Ako, kaiako, teachers, school leaders and tumuaki to achieve better outcomes for students and learners.

Back
School leaders

Educational Leadership

To grow a thriving village of leaders.

Back
Kaupapa Māori

Māori Education & Support

Our kaiwhakaruruhau specialise in facilitating kaupapa Māori professional learning and development.

Back
All languages are to be treasured

Languages, Culture & Identity

We offer programmes, workshops, in-person classroom support, online support and resources to help strengthen language learning in New Zealand schools.

Back
Cultural competencies

Pacific-Led Education

Empowering educators, students, and communities to shape a future of educational excellence that is firmly rooted in Pacific identity and aspirations.

Back
Improving instructional dexterity

Literacy and Numeracy

We work with schools to build the literacy and numeracy capability of school leaders and teachers to accelerate learning outcomes for all students.

Languages

2023 - Pasifika - Term 4 Newsletter Articles

November 8, 2023

October brought together four Pacific language weeks: Gana Tuvalu – 1st October to 7th October, Vosa Vakaviti – 8th October to 14th, Vagahau Niuē – 15th October to 21st October, Gagana Tokelau – 22nd October - 28th October, out of the total of nine Pacific language weeks celebrated annually. I have shared three linguistic feature bites about each of these languages.

Gana Tuvalu / Tuvaluan
The Gagana Sāmoa/Samoan language was introduced in Tuvalu when the Samoan missionary administered the churches in Tuvalu. Until 1977, when the Gana Tuvalu version of the New Testament was published, people had used the Samoan version.

Partial or full reduplication in Gana Tuvalu is common. For example, when changing verb subject – verb agreement to plural. Table 1 shows reduplication as well as the differences in the North and South of Tuvalu.

Gana Tuvalu relies heavily on verb usage and Tuvaluans tend to prefer using verbs over nouns. Nouns can be formed from many verbs by adding the suffix –ga. In Southern dialects, adding -ga lengthens the last vowel of the verb root of the new noun. Many nouns can also be used as verbs.

Vosa vaka viti / Fijian language
In Vosa Vakaviti, there is a complex chain of over thirty dialects. The extreme western and extreme eastern varieties are mutually unintelligible. For example, the Yasawa archipelago is north-west of Viti Levu, which is the most populated island of Fiji. There are twenty-five villages in the Yasawas, and the majority are situated on the larger islands of Naviti (7), Yasawa (6), Nacula (4) and Waya (4). People of the islands have close traditional links with the Ba district of the mainland.  Similar to other areas west of a divide from Tavua on the north coast of Viti Levu to the mouth of the Navua River in the south, people speak a series of communalects which form part of the larger dialect complex known as Western Fijian (Triffitt, 2000).

It has the basic word orders of V (verb) O (object) S (subject) and VSO respectively. However, there is considerable freedom in the order in which constituents can occur.

Most Pacific languages do not show gender in pronouns. Vosa Vakaviti is consistent with this and uses o koya which means ‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘it.’ (Geraghty, 1983, as cited in Lynch, Ross & Crowley, 1998).

Vagahau Niuē / Niuean
Vagahau Niuē and Lea-Faka Tonga are the only two members of the Tongic subgroup of the Polynesian family. This subgrouping is supported by both phonological and morphological evidence.

In Vagahau Niuē, all short vowels may combine with each other to form diphthongs. Possible diphthongs are: /ae/ /ai/ /ao/ /au/ /ea/ /ei/ /eo/ /eu/ /ia/ /ie/ /io/ /iu/ /oa/ /oe/ /oi/ /ou/ /ua/ /ue/ /ui/ /uo/.

Vagahau Niuē consists of two main dialects, the Motu dialect in the north of the island and the Tafiti dialect in the south. Motu means ‘the people of the island’ and Tafiti means ‘the strangers – or people from a distance). Table 2 shows some vocabulary differences between the two dialects:

Gagana Tokelau / Tokelauan
Tokelau is mutually intelligible with Tuvaluan. The recognition of Samoan literature was largely due to its early introduction by Christian Samoan missionaries, who used Gagana Sāmoa as the language of instruction in schools and churches. It also has striking similarities with the Niuafo’ou language of Tonga.

Another interesting linguistic feature is the distribution of “the” and “this”. In English these two words precede a noun – in “the boat” or “this boat”. They can’t appear together, meaning we wouldn’t say “the this boat”. In linguistics, this is referred to as a “slot” in the grammar that takes either “the” or “this”. But in Gagana Tokelau this one-slot theory doesn’t work. Therefore, we can have both “te” (the) and “tēnei” (this) together, making “te vaka tēnei” (the this boat). In other words, Gagana Tokelau has two slots – one before the noun and one after it.

While printed and spoken Gagana Tokelau can reflect vocabulary and accent (intonation) differences between the Gagana Tokelau spoken in the Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo communities, these differences are becoming less apparent with each generation. Nowadays, when listening to a young person speaking, for example, it is no longer always easy to tell which atoll they come from (The Tokelau Department of education, n.d.)

References
Jackson, G. & Jackson, J. (1999). An Introduction to Tuvaluan. Suva: Oceania 1999.

Lynch, J., Ross, M., & Crowley, T. (2001). The oceanic languages.
Curzon. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203820384

The Tokelau Department of Education (n.d.) Gagana Tokelau
https://gagana-tokelau.org.nz/en/language-standards
Triffitt, G. (2000). The dialects of the Yasawa Islands of Fiji. 10.15144/PL-505.315.

Tukimata, N. (2017). Tia E Lili Ke Mau. Regeneration of Vagahau Niue: A case study of Niue
youth through the Ekalesia in Niue and in Auckland (Master’s thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand). Retrieved from
https://openrepository.aut.ac.nz/items/e05f88f9-057a-4668-8eba-3b6c80536ad9

SHARE THIS INSIGHT
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BLOG
You successfully subscribed
Error submitting
Stay in the know
Subscribe to our newsletter for news and updates!
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

2023 - Pasifika - Term 4 Newsletter Articles

Gana Tuvalu / Tuvaluan
The Gagana Sāmoa/Samoan language was introduced in Tuvalu when the Samoan missionary administered the churches in Tuvalu. Until 1977, when the Gana Tuvalu version of the New Testament was published, people had used the Samoan version.

Partial or full reduplication in Gana Tuvalu is common. For example, when changing verb subject – verb agreement to plural. Table 1 shows reduplication as well as the differences in the North and South of Tuvalu.

Gana Tuvalu relies heavily on verb usage and Tuvaluans tend to prefer using verbs over nouns. Nouns can be formed from many verbs by adding the suffix –ga. In Southern dialects, adding -ga lengthens the last vowel of the verb root of the new noun. Many nouns can also be used as verbs.

Vosa vaka viti / Fijian language
In Vosa Vakaviti, there is a complex chain of over thirty dialects. The extreme western and extreme eastern varieties are mutually unintelligible. For example, the Yasawa archipelago is north-west of Viti Levu, which is the most populated island of Fiji. There are twenty-five villages in the Yasawas, and the majority are situated on the larger islands of Naviti (7), Yasawa (6), Nacula (4) and Waya (4). People of the islands have close traditional links with the Ba district of the mainland.  Similar to other areas west of a divide from Tavua on the north coast of Viti Levu to the mouth of the Navua River in the south, people speak a series of communalects which form part of the larger dialect complex known as Western Fijian (Triffitt, 2000).

It has the basic word orders of V (verb) O (object) S (subject) and VSO respectively. However, there is considerable freedom in the order in which constituents can occur.

Most Pacific languages do not show gender in pronouns. Vosa Vakaviti is consistent with this and uses o koya which means ‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘it.’ (Geraghty, 1983, as cited in Lynch, Ross & Crowley, 1998).

Vagahau Niuē / Niuean
Vagahau Niuē and Lea-Faka Tonga are the only two members of the Tongic subgroup of the Polynesian family. This subgrouping is supported by both phonological and morphological evidence.

In Vagahau Niuē, all short vowels may combine with each other to form diphthongs. Possible diphthongs are: /ae/ /ai/ /ao/ /au/ /ea/ /ei/ /eo/ /eu/ /ia/ /ie/ /io/ /iu/ /oa/ /oe/ /oi/ /ou/ /ua/ /ue/ /ui/ /uo/.

Vagahau Niuē consists of two main dialects, the Motu dialect in the north of the island and the Tafiti dialect in the south. Motu means ‘the people of the island’ and Tafiti means ‘the strangers – or people from a distance). Table 2 shows some vocabulary differences between the two dialects:

Gagana Tokelau / Tokelauan
Tokelau is mutually intelligible with Tuvaluan. The recognition of Samoan literature was largely due to its early introduction by Christian Samoan missionaries, who used Gagana Sāmoa as the language of instruction in schools and churches. It also has striking similarities with the Niuafo’ou language of Tonga.

Another interesting linguistic feature is the distribution of “the” and “this”. In English these two words precede a noun – in “the boat” or “this boat”. They can’t appear together, meaning we wouldn’t say “the this boat”. In linguistics, this is referred to as a “slot” in the grammar that takes either “the” or “this”. But in Gagana Tokelau this one-slot theory doesn’t work. Therefore, we can have both “te” (the) and “tēnei” (this) together, making “te vaka tēnei” (the this boat). In other words, Gagana Tokelau has two slots – one before the noun and one after it.

While printed and spoken Gagana Tokelau can reflect vocabulary and accent (intonation) differences between the Gagana Tokelau spoken in the Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo communities, these differences are becoming less apparent with each generation. Nowadays, when listening to a young person speaking, for example, it is no longer always easy to tell which atoll they come from (The Tokelau Department of education, n.d.)

References
Jackson, G. & Jackson, J. (1999). An Introduction to Tuvaluan. Suva: Oceania 1999.

Lynch, J., Ross, M., & Crowley, T. (2001). The oceanic languages.
Curzon. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203820384

The Tokelau Department of Education (n.d.) Gagana Tokelau
https://gagana-tokelau.org.nz/en/language-standards
Triffitt, G. (2000). The dialects of the Yasawa Islands of Fiji. 10.15144/PL-505.315.

Tukimata, N. (2017). Tia E Lili Ke Mau. Regeneration of Vagahau Niue: A case study of Niue
youth through the Ekalesia in Niue and in Auckland (Master’s thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand). Retrieved from
https://openrepository.aut.ac.nz/items/e05f88f9-057a-4668-8eba-3b6c80536ad9