Polynesian Languages

The Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in geographical Polynesia as well as on a patchwork of "Outliers" from south central Micronesia, to small islands off the northeast of the larger islands of the Southeast Solomon Islands and sprinked through Vanuatu. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family, belonging to the Oceanic branch of that family. Polynesians share many unique cultural traits which resulted from about 1000 years of common development, including common linguistic development, in the Tonga and Samoa area through most of the first millennium BC.

Today there are many cognate words across the different islands e.g. tapu, ali'i, motu, kava (Kava culture), and tapa as well as Hawaiki, the mythical homeland for some of the cultures.

There are approximately forty Polynesian languages. The most prominent of these are Tahitian, Samoan, Tongan, Māori and Hawaiian. Because the Polynesian islands were settled relatively recently and because internal linguistic diversification only began around 2,000 years ago, their languages retain strong commonalities.