Rapaic language
| Japanese | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
French Polynesia | |
| speaker | 521 | |
| Linguistic classification |
Austronesian
|
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-3 |
ray |
|
Japanese is the language in Rapa in the Austral Islands of French Polynesia .
Japanese is threatened with extinction, as the rigid French language policy only allows French and marginalizes minority languages. In French Polynesia, for example, only French is permitted as the official and teaching language. Japanese has no status, is not allowed to be taught in schools and has no media coverage in the French- controlled area. As a result, Japanese speakers are increasingly using French as their mother tongue and forgetting their own language, so that the number of speakers has dropped below 521 and continues to decline.
Japanese is classified as an eastern central Polynesian language , along with the Marquesan languages and the Tahitian languages .
The language is sufficiently different from the rest of the languages that are in this group and forms its own language category within the classification. The language has developed in relative isolation over the past 700 years.