Rakahanga-Manihiki language

Rakahanga-Manihiki is a Cook Islands Maori dialectal variant belonging to the Polynesian languages family, spoken by about 2500 people on Rakahanga and Manihiki Islands (part of the Cook Islands) and another 2500 in other countries, mostly New Zealand and Australia. Wurm and Hattori consider Rakahanga Manihiki as a distinct language with "limited intelligibility with Rarotongan" (i.e. the Cook Islands Maori dialectal variant of Rarotonga). According to the New Zealand Maori anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter Buck) who spent few days on Rakahanga in the years 1920, "the language is a pleasing dialect and has closer affinities with Maori than with the dialects of Tongareva, Tahiti, and the Cook Islands"

Indicative bibliography

• Manihikian Traditional Narratives: In English and Manihikian: Stories of the Cook Islands (Na fakahiti o Manihiki). Papatoetoe, New Zealand: Te Ropu Kahurangi.1988
• E au tuatua ta'ito no Manihiki, Kauraka Kauraka, IPS, USP, Suva. 1987.
• "No te kapuaanga o te enua nei ko Manihiki (the origin of the island of Manihiki)", in JPS, 24 (1915), p.140-144.

External links

• Ethnologue: Languages of the World (unknown ed.). SIL International.
• Te Reo Maori Act (2003)
• Ethnology of Manihiki and Rakahanga",Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1932 (Chapter dealing with Rakahanga Manihiki "language" and its writting system at the beginning of the twentieth century.