| Rakahanga-Manihiki | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Cook Islands | |
| Region: | Rakahanga and Manihiki islands | |
| Total speakers: | 5000 (1981 Wurm and Hattori) | |
| Language family: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian(MP) Central-Eastern MP Eastern MP Oceanic Central-Eastern Oceanic Remote Oceanic Central Pacific East Fijian-Polynesian Polynesian Nuclear Polynesian Eastern Polynesian Central E. Polynesian Tahitic Rakahanga-Manihiki |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Cook Islands | |
| Regulated by: | Kopapa Reo | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | None | |
| ISO 639-2: | – | |
| ISO 639-3: | rkh | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Rakahanga-Manihiki is a Cook Islands Maori dialectal variant[1] 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"[2] (i.e. the Cook Islands Maori dialectal variant of Rarotonga). According to the New Zealand Maori anthropologist Te Rangi Hīroa 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"[3]