Rakahanga-Manihiki language

language
name=Rakahanga-Manihiki
nativename=
familycolor=Austronesian
states=Cook Islands
region=Rakahanga and Manihiki islands
speakers=5000 (1981 Wurm and Hattori)
fam2=Malayo-Polynesian(MP)
fam3=Central-Eastern MP
fam4=Eastern MP
fam5=Oceanic
fam6=Central-Eastern Oceanic
fam7=Remote Oceanic
fam8=Central Pacific
fam9=East Fijian-Polynesian
fam10=Polynesian
fam11=Nuclear Polynesian
fam12=Eastern Polynesian
fam13=Central E. Polynesian
fam14=Tahitic
iso3=rkh
nation=Cook Islands
agency=Kopapa Reo

Rakahanga-Manihiki is a Cook Islands Maori dialectal variant ["Reo Maori Act" (2003)] belonging to the Polynesian languages family, spoken by about 2500 people on Rakahanga and Manihiki Islands (part of the Cook Islands) and another 2500 in other countries, mostly New Zealand and Australia. Wurm and Hattori consider Rakahanga Manihiki as a distinct language with "limited intelligibility with Rarotongan" [Wurm and Hattori,"atlas of Pacific area" (1981), the only source of the SIL and ISO 639-3 codification] (i.e. the Cook Islands Maori dialectal variant of Rarotonga). According to the New Zealand Maori anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter Buck) who spent few days on Rakahanga in the years 1920, "the language is a pleasing dialect and has closer affinities with Maori than with the dialects of Tongareva, Tahiti, and the Cook Islands" ["Ethnology of Manihiki and Rakahanga", Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1932. This book was the source of Wurm and Hattori Atlas]

Notes

Indicative bibliography

*"Manihikian Traditional Narratives: In English and Manihikian: Stories of the Cook Islands (Na fakahiti o Manihiki)". Papatoetoe, New Zealand: Te Ropu Kahurangi.1988
* "E au tuatua ta'ito no Manihiki", Kauraka Kauraka, IPS, USP, Suva. 1987.
* "No te kapuaanga o te enua nei ko Manihiki (the origin of the island of Manihiki)", in JPS, 24 (1915), p.140-144.

External links

*
* [http://www.paclii.org/ck/legis/num_act/trma2003130/ "Te Reo Maori Act (2003)"]
* [http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-BucMani-t1-body-d1-d1-d6.html "Ethnology of Manihiki and Rakahanga",Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1932 (Chapter dealing with Rakahanga Manihiki "language" and its writing system at the beginning of the twentieth century.]