Contemporary Rotuman is a result of significant Polynesian borrowing, following Samoan and Tongan migrations into Rotuma.

Unlike its Pacific neighbors, Rotuman is typically considered an AVO (agent–verb–object) language.

The above table (C indicates any consonant) shows that metathesis and deletion are important parts of incomplete phase formation.

The prevalent one used today is one from the Australian Methodist Reverend C. M. Churchward, whose knowledge of linguistics devised the Tongan orthography as well.

Here is the alphabet, as it appears in Churchward's seminal work, "Rotuman Grammar and Dictionary": For the variations to the vowels a, o and i, Churchward's dictionary treats these letters as if no variation between the species occurred within the base letter: the word päega, meaning seat, appears before pạri meaning banana, which, in turn, appears before pau, meaning very much.

Because Churchward's alphabet was created before a sufficient analysis of Rotuman phonology, it is not purely phonemic.

George Milner[18] proposed a more phonemic spelling without diacritics, which incorporates the understanding of vowel allophony as having to do with metathesis (see above) This is the Rotuman language version of the Lord's Prayer, as found in the translation of the Bible published in 1975 (Matthew 6:9–13).