Episode 22 Languages of the South Pacific Part 2

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter (2019)

Film Review

The Polynesian languages are the second newest in the world (Creole being the newest). They only emerged in the last millennium. The peoples who left Taiwan (see The Origin of South Pacific Languages) around 3000 BC had established clear settlements in Samoa and Tonga by 1200 BC. They reached Tahiti by 200 AD, when prevailing westerlies kept them from exploring more islands east of Tahiti. Between 1140 and 1260 AD the direction of the prevailing winds shifted and they reached New Caledonia and New Zealand.

The word for bird is the same in Tongan, Samoan, Tahitian, Maori and Hawaiian.

The Austronesian language family is divided into three subfamilies:

• Western – Tagalog, Indonesian and Javanese
• Central – Tetum (spoken in Timur and Kamura) and Keo (spoken in western Indonesia)
• Eastern – Oceanic (aka South Pacific, aka Polynesian) languages

The Polynesian languages, the most recent to develop, tend to have the smallest number of sounds with short syllables and no consonant clusters or long words. As language groups split off the number of words tends to decrease in proportion to the decrease in speaker numbers.

Most linguists believe the first languages originating in Africa were click languages. They had the largest number of sounds, and as languages evolved there was steady loss of sonic material. This most obvious in recently evolved languages. For example most Polynesian languages use the same pronoun for he and she.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120042