[8] Contact between Old Rapa and Tahitian speakers was indirect and never prolonged, violating a requirement to be called a koiné language.

[10] The loss of the indigenous Old Rapa began with an enormous population decrease due to disease brought by foreigners (mainly Europeans).

Being the powerful influence it was, its ways of religion, education, and government were easily adopted by the people of Rapa Iti, and the language of Tahiti followed.

[2] The oldest published documentation of Old Rapa dates back to 1864, a short word list compiled by James L. Green under the London Missionary Society.

Additionally, a book of legends was published in 2008 that was the product of the work of French ethnologist Christian Ghasarian [fr] and a Rapa elder, Alfred Make.

While /p/ is constantly bilabial and /t/ is dento-alveolar, the place where /k/ is articulated can range anywhere from pre-velar to uvular.

Walworth uses the following examples to demonstrate these differing occurrences:[2] The alveolar and post-alveolar stops, while distinguishable in the linguistic study of Old Rapa, are often misinterpreted as the phoneme /k/ to native speakers.

[2] In the study of velar stops, there are instances in which lenition, the weakened articulation of a consonant, occurs.

[2] When referring to the Rapa usage of the phoneme /ɾ/, there is a distinct difference between the alveolar tap and a trill.

When pronounced in words where it is located at the beginning of the stressed syllable, the alveolar tap becomes better defined as a trill.

[2] When observing the usage of the labiodental fricative /v/, the shift period away from Old Rapa becomes more evident.

[2] In the older generations of native speakers, this phoneme is articulated more like that of the labiodental approximant [ʋ].

’eiahaNEG’aIPFVhaeregomaiEViPREPtō-kuART-POSS-PAT-SGfarehouse’eiaha ’a haere mai i tō-ku fareNEG IPFV go EV PREP ART-POSS-PAT-SG house