Reo Maohi

Reo Maohi is the Tahitian language, the leading member of the reo Mā'ohi, the Polynesian tongues of French Polynesia, and an Eastern Polynesian language spoken chiefly on the Society Islands. For centuries it was a purely spoken language, carried in oratory, song and the recitations of the traveling arioi society.

Tahitian reshaped its vocabulary through pi'i, the sacred name taboo: words resembling a chief's name were replaced, so that tū for standing gave way to ti'a under King Tū-nui-ē'a-i-te-atua, grandfather of the Pōmare dynasty.

In 1797 Protestant missionaries of the London Missionary Society landed from the ship Duff; Henry Nott, working with King Pōmare II, and John Davies fixed an alphabet of five vowels and nine consonants. Davies printed the first Tahitian book, a spelling book, in 1810, and the translated Bible became a text through which many Polynesians learned to read.