[2]: 62 Saint-Louis was founded as a Marist mission in 1860 in the early French colonial period of the island, in order to convert the native Kanak population to Christianity and a European way of life.

[2]: 63  The missionaries took converts from surrounding Kanak tribes, especially the Cèmuhi, Drubea and Xârâcuu to live in the mission.

[2]: 66 The girls school in Saint-Louis has been widely considered instrumental in creating the conditions for the formation of Tayo, especially by Speedy (2013).

[3]: 2  He based this claim on phonological, lexical and grammatical similarities between the languages and the fact that some Reunionese had settled near Saint-Louis.

This modifier, also present in New Caledonian French, occurs frequently, especially with English loanwords and monosyllabic words.

Meanwhile, example (e) shows the independent pronoun lja as an indirect object, as it is after the preposition ave. (d) sa wa mwa they see me “They see me”[4] (e) nu tro aːᵐbete ave lja depi taler we too annoyed with him/her since just.now “We too are annoyed with him since just now”[4] Independent pronouns can also function as emphatic subjects.

In these cases, the dependent pronoun functions like a clitic, characterised by Ehrart and Revis (2013) as a subject index.

“My house” (Ehrhart & Revis 2013)Tense and aspect, and modality are encoded in markers preceding the verb, as shown in the table below: you  write  what “What are you writing”[4] we PAST well  arrive   why “Why did we arrive well?”[4] FOC  depression-the/this  will hit    us “And see, this tropical depression will hit us”[4] you  PROG     do  what “What are you doing at the moment?”[4] I    COMPL    live   Nouméa “I used to live in Nouméa”[4] but nobody SI want  give “...

[5]: 216  Likewise, progressive aspect marking occurs in all three languages, and French uses the phrase en train de with a similar function in pre-verbal position.