Tongan Introduction
From UniLang Wiki
Tongan (lea faka-Tonga) is an Austronesian, west Polynesian language. It's the official language of the Kingdom of Tonga in the south Pacific. It is very similar to the languages of Niue and Uvea (Wallis) is. and also similar to Samoan and the rest of the Polynesian languages. It is probably the most conservative Polynesian language, since it maintains more phonemes and uses more consonants in words. Besides Tonga and Samoa were probably the first Polynesian groups of islands to be settled at around 1000 BC by the so-called Lapita people who probably came from southeast Asia. Among the groups of these early settlers one can call Proto-Polynesians, slight variations of language already existed. Later the differences between the language of the inhabitants of Tonga and Samoa became more and more important and formed two different languages, not mutually intelligible today. Tongan and Niuean form the Tongic subgroup, while that Proto-Samoan became the core from which the languages of Eastern Polynesia evolved, after Eastern Polynesia's settlement, about 2000 years ago.
Tongan is spoken today by 100.000 people in Tonga and around 30.000 or more Tongans living overseas, mainly in the US, Australia, Hawai'i and New Zealand.
Tongan grammar can be described as generally easy to learn. It is an analytical language with no verb conjugation, no noun declension and simple pronunciation.
