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INTRODUCTION

Iaorana 'oe! O' Bruce Rimell to'u i'oa, e Peretani au. My name is Bruce Rimell, and I am British.

So why a website about the Tahitian language? Well, I used to live in Japan, and when I was there I fell in love with the music of the Pacific - in Japan you can get all sorts of CDs of Hawaiian, Tahitian and Easter Island music, and I particularly enjoyed the music of Tahiti. After hearing the songs, I wanted to find out more about the language of Tahiti, but there wasn't much in bookshops or on the Internet in English. There were some wordlists and a few lessons, but I wanted to learn more. Tahitian seemed to talk about the world in a way that was new to me.

So without any grammar or textbooks to work from, I kept listening to the music, and slowly tried to take the language of the songs apart so that I could learn how to speak it. This is still in progress. As I learn more about Tahitian through my slow progress and analysis, more and more grammar and words are revealed. Sometimes I feel like a code-breaker...

The Tahitian language website is the oldest part of the site, having first been online in 2003. I've kept it here more out of a sense of tradition than anything else. I still get a lot of email about Tahitian, but unfortunately these days my busy life means I don't have the time to answer your queries. So if you are looking for a particular Tahitian word, a song translation or for me to recommend a good language book, I'm no longer able to offer any advice. I hope you will understand...

Sources for the lessons

I took from many varied sources for these lessons, and as such everything on this site can be used by anyone for the purpose of learning Tahitian. Be aware, though, that the lessons structures and much of the artwork is my own work, so I would ask that you do not mass produce any of this, or falsify authorship. All of this, however, can be used for personal use, and perhaps (if there aren't too many errors) for use in the classroom. The exception to this is the work in the "Writings" and "Te Ratere" sections, which is my own work and therefore Copyright (C) Bruce Rimell. If you want to use these writings for a class (you might, after you've corrected the mistakes!), then please ask me. I'll probably say yes :-)

The conversations I also wrote myself, but as they are an integral part of the lessons, they are free to use without seeking my permission. I would hope that you wouldn't falsify the authorship of these, however, or any of the other work on this site.

The song lyrics in the "Songs" section are songs from Tahitian CDs I have bought, and full credit is given to the singer, the writer and the publisher after each song. I would hope that this enough, and while I realise this is copyrighted material which I havent sought permission to use, if the copyright holders should email me asking me to remove the song(s) from the site, I will do so immediately. I hope that the copyright holders realise why I am putting their material on this site - to spread Tahitian culture further.

The Sources

CDs - Words and songs were taken from the following CDs:

 

Copyright (c) 2002-2008 Bruce Rimell : All images, artwork, writings, texts and other information on this site
are copyrighted to Bruce Rimell and may not be reproduced in any form unless stated otherwise.