Tongan Language Guide

Official language in
Tonga
Script
Latin

Where it's spoken

Tongan (lea fakatonga) is a Polynesian language spoken mainly in Tonga, where it is one of the two official languages, together with English. In the most recent national census, the share of the population counted as literate in Tongan was 95.7%, higher than the 88.5% counted as literate in English.

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Script & pronunciation

Tongan is written with the Latin alphabet. This app's cards mark two features on top of the plain letters: the macron, which lengthens a vowel, and the ʻokina, which marks a glottal stop — both appear together in Mālō ʻaupito ("thank you very much"). Tongan contrasts five vowels, and at the start of a word it distinguishes a glottal stop, an h, and no consonant at all, as shown by this app's cards ʻIo ("yes"), hongofulu ("ten"), and ua ("two").

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Grammar essentials

Tongan's basic and preferred sentence order is verb first, then the agent, then the patient — in the words of one grammatical study, Tongan is, "mutatis mutandis," a VSO language, though this order is not compulsory. Tense is shown by a marker placed before the verb — ʻoku for the present and naʻe for the past — and Tongan also has a future marker (te/ʻe) and a perfect marker (kuo), as in this app's card ʻOku ʻikai te u lava ʻo lea fakatonga. ("I can't speak lea faka-Tonga"). Subject pronouns such as ou ("I") work differently from full nouns: they carry their own agent role and must come directly before the verb rather than after it, as in this app's card ʻOku ou fiefia ke aʻu ki Tonga ("I am happy to come to Tonga"), where ʻOku is the tense marker, ou is "I", and fiefia is "happy". Tongan possessive words split into two sets depending on whether the thing possessed is treated as an activity the possessor carries out or as a part or property of the possessor; this app's cards hoku hingoa ("my name") and hoku taʻu ("my age") use the second set. This app's cards also show negation formed by placing ʻikai before the word being negated, as in ʻOku ʻikai ("no / that's not right").

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Politeness & etiquette

Tongan has three distinct social registers, sometimes described as speech levels: one used to and about the King, one for the nobility, and one for commoners, and the differences between them lie mainly in vocabulary rather than grammar. For the same basic action, a different word can be chosen depending on whether the person referred to is a commoner, a noble, or the King. In practice this vocabulary is not limited to strict matching by rank: people of the same rank typically use the everyday, commoner words with one another, and nobles and the royal family use commoner words when speaking to those below them.

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