Rapa

Rapa (or Rapan) is the language of Rapa Iti, in the Austral Islands of French Polynesia, and of Mangaia in the Cook Islands. It is an Eastern Polynesian language. There are three varieties of the Rapa language currently being spoken in French Polynesia: Old Rapa, Reo Rapa and New Rapa. Old Rapa has been mostly replaced by Reo Rapa, a mix of the more commonly spoken Tahitian and Old Rapa. New Rapa – revitalized Old Rapa – is commonly spoken by middle-aged and younger speakers. Rapa is a critically endangered language, and there are only around 300 speakers of Reo Rapa, with only 15% of them able to speak Old Rapa. It may be more vibrant on Mangaia, but there the population has been declining for half a century due to emigration. Varieties There are three varieties of the Rapa language currently being spoken: Old Rapa, Reo Rapa and New Rapa. Old Rapa is the indigenous form of Rapa. Reo Rapa as a language was created, not simply by incorporating lexical terms from Tahitian to Old Rapa, but from bilingualism and language shift due to the dominance of Tahitian. While Reo Rapa is a mix of Tahitian and Old Rapa, speakers can generally tell if the words they are speaking are sourced from Tahitian or Old Rapa due to phonemes absent in one language and present in the other. Based on the phonological form, speakers of Reo Rapa are aware that certain words they speak belong to Old Rapa or Tahitian. For instance, velar nasal sounds such as and velar stop sounds like are not present in Tahitian but are in Old Rapa. The most common variety on the island of Rapa Iti is Reo Rapa. It was formed from Tahitian and Old Rapa and developed due to language shift. However, this shift halted at some point in the language's development. Walworth defines this as a shift-break language. Reo Rapa is not a koine language, where a language is created due to interaction between two groups speaking mutually intelligible languages. Contact between Old Rapa and Tahitian speakers was indirect and never prolonged, violating a requirement to be called a koiné language. Reo Rapa was the result of a monolingual community that began to shift to the more dominant Tahitian Language, thus creating a bilingual community, which eventually led to Reo Rapa. Although they are sister languages, it is important to note that neither Reo Rapa nor Old Rapa should be confused with the Rapa Nui language.