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Tongan 〔Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh〕 (') is an Austronesian language of the Polynesian branch spoken in Tonga. It has around 200,000 speakers〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Kingdom of Tonga country brief )〕 and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO (verb–subject–object) language. ==Related languages== Tongan is one of the multiple languages in the Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages, along with Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan and Tahitian, for example. Together with Niuean, it forms the Tongic subgroup of Polynesian. Tongan is unusual among Polynesian languages in that it has a so-called ''definitive accent''. As with all Polynesian languages, Tongan has adapted the phonological system of proto-Polynesian. # Tongan has retained the original proto-Polynesian *h, but has merged it with the original *s as . (The found in modern Tongan derives from *t before high front vowels). Most Polynesian languages have lost the original proto-Polynesian glottal stop ; however, it has been retained in Tongan and a few other languages including Rapa Nui.〔The glottal stop in most other Polynesian languages are the reflexes of other consonants of proto-Polynesian; for example, the glottal stop of Samoan and Hawaiian is a reflex of the original *k; the glottal stop of Cook Islands Māori represents a merger of the original *f and *s. Tongan does not show changes such as the *t to and to of Hawaiian; nor has Tongan shifted *f to . Although Tongan, Samoan and other Western Polynesian languages are not affected by a change in Central Eastern Polynesian languages (such as New Zealand Māori) involving the dissimilation of to , Tongan has vowel changes (as seen in ''monumanu'' from original ''manumanu'') which are not a feature of other languages.〕 # In proto-Polynesian, *r and *l were distinct phonemes, but in most Polynesian languages they have merged, represented orthographically as ''r'' in most East Polynesian languages, and as ''l'' in most West Polynesian languages. However, the distinction can be reconstructed because Tongan kept the *l but lost the *r.〔This loss may be quite recent. The word "lua", meaning "two", is still found in some placenames and archaic texts. "Marama" (light) thus became "maama", and the two successive "a"s are still pronounced separately, not yet contracted to "māma". On the other hand "toro" (sugarcane) already has become "tō" (still "tolo" in Sāmoan).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tongan language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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