OTHER STUFF
In the course of the previous lessons, we've looked at verbs, nouns, greetings, people and places, as well as possessives and adjectives. A lot of the following grammar points and background knowledge will also be useful when reading the "Songs" section but before we go there, have a look at the points below.
Click on a link to find out a bit more about each one. Perhaps you can make up some of your own activies to help you practice these.
Causatives. Tahitian often uses one of several causatives prefixes. The meaning of these is roughly equivalent to the English "cause to do, let do, or make someone do something". The prefixes are fa'a-, ha'a- and fá'-.
Dependent clause announcers. These announcers are also common, and they coordinate dependent clauses with the main clause, just as "that" and "which" do in English. The main ones are tei and i.
Object pronouns. A quick overview of pronouns used as objects, and how they combine with the pronoun object marker iá.
Negatives. We've actually learnt this as part of the lessons, but here it is in a very brief overview.
Intensifiers and Diminutives. A quick overview of some words used to intensify and diminish: nui, iti, ho'i and roa.
Directionals. These follow verbs and nouns. Just as te...nei and te...ra tell if the action is near or far away, the directionals tell you in which direction relative to the speaker the action is moving. Common directionals are mai, atu, a'e and iho.
Tahitian, Hawaiian and other Polynesian Languages. A quick comparison of some Tahitian and Hawaiian words, and their differences in sound, followed by a look at the numbers from 1 to 10 in many Polynesian languages.
Rarotongan. A quick overview of the Rarotongan language with a wordlist and conversation.
Numbers, Counting and Telling the Time in Tahitian. A quick overview of numbers, counting, telling the time and ordinal numbers in Tahitian, as well as a couple of practice exercises. Days and months are also covered here.
French Polynesia. Throughout this course, we've concentrated only on Tahiti, but French Polynesia is more than just Tahiti. There are five main archipelagos: the Society Islands (of which Tahiti is one island), the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, the Australs and the Gambiers. We'll be taking a quick look at each of these in turn.
Benefactive Possessives. Apart from the four sets of possessives we've learnt about so far, there's actually another two sets, the nó- and ná- series. These have the same distinction as tó- and tá-, but have an additional meaning of "for" or "by".
Family and kinship words. A list of words relating to family members and kinship, which is quite a complex subject in Polynesian languages. This list gives both traditional and modern words.
Word confusion. A comparison of some similar sounding words in Tahitian and their various meanings. This is to clear up any confusion that these similarities might cause.
The suffix -ra'a. An important derivational suffix in Tahitian.
Reduplication. A common device in Tahitian and other Polynesian languages to intensify the meaning of words.
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