Mangarevan

Mangarevan is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Mangarevan people of the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia. It belongs to the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family and is generally placed within the Eastern Polynesian subgroup, often described as part of the Marquesic sub-branch, making it closely related to Marquesan languages and Tahitian. The language has figured prominently in historical work on Polynesian linguistics because it preserves features that illuminate early stages of Proto-Polynesian and the diversification of the eastern Polynesian languages.

Today, Mangarevan is endangered. The community of native speakers is small and predominantly older, with language transmission to younger generations limited. Many Mangarevan people are bilingual in French or Tahitian, and language shift has reduced daily use in some contexts. Despite this, there are ongoing documentation efforts, including descriptive grammars, dictionaries, and field notes produced by linguists, alongside community initiatives aimed at language maintenance and revival.

Phonology and writing: Mangarevan has a relatively compact phoneme inventory typical of Polynesian languages, including a five-vowel system and a set of consonants that includes the glottal stop. It is written with the Latin alphabet, with scholarly works employing diacritics to reflect phonological distinctions. Morphology often features reduplication and other Polynesian affixation patterns, and the syntax exhibits features common to Eastern Polynesian languages.

Resources on Mangarevan include linguistic descriptions, lexical works, and recordings, which support efforts to preserve and study the language for current and future speakers.