Futunan language

The term East-Futunan is also used to distinguish it from the related West Futunan (Futuna-Aniwan) spoken on the outlier islands of Futuna and Aniwa in Vanuatu.

[4] In 1961 citizens voted on becoming a French overseas territory, legally unionizing Wallis and Futuna despite the fact that the islands are home to two distinct Polynesian societies with different cultures.

Long vowels are denoted by a macron: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū. Futunan has 11 consonants: 4 plosives /p, t, k, ʔ/; 3 nasals /m, n, ŋ/; 1 liquid /l/; and 3 fricatives /f, v, s/.

[8] The Futunan syllable structure is (C)V, examples: eio (yes), tauasu (meeting where one drinks kava), aua (particle of the negative imperative), etc.).

As Futunan natives did not have a writing system, the first documented written form of Futunian was a list of 118 words collected by William Schouten [fr] and Jacob Le Maire in 1616 during their visit to Futuna.

[9] The first orthography for Futunan was developed by Isidore Grétzel, and was largely phonological, with vowel length indicated by a superscript dash (e.g. ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) and glottal stop by an apostrophe.

This practice was then adopted and improved by Claire Moyse-Faurie, notably replacing the superscript denoting vowel length with a macron.

In daily life, the macron is usually omitted or replaced with a circumflex accent due to difficulties in typing these diacritics on an AZERTY keyboard.

Claire Moyse-Faurie nevertheless believes that it is essential to note the vowel length and the glottal stroke in order to distinguish words correctly and avoid any confusion.

In some cases unique to the Polynesian language family, Futunan uses a pre-posed pronoun to refer to the patient of an ergative verb.

Sentences containing post-posed pronouns only have two possible word orders: VAO (Verb, Adverb, Object) or VOA (Verb, Object, Adverb) (Example: etusiʻi a au e lātou ke kau ano o fakafofoga loku fā kolo i le aso o Toloke.