Polynesian

The Polynesian languages form a group within the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. Their speakers descend from Lapita navigators who settled the Tonga and Samoa area about three thousand years ago; roughly a millennium of shared development produced Proto-Polynesian, their common ancestor. Polynesian voyagers then scattered across the Pacific, reaching the Society Islands, the Marquesas, the Hawaiian archipelago by about 300 CE, distant Rapa Nui and finally New Zealand, while other groups settled as outliers across the western Pacific. The family divides into the Tongic branch of Tongan and Niuean and the much larger Nuclear Polynesian branch, and its languages still share a common stock of words, including tapu, ariki and kava.

Long transmitted orally through genealogies and chants, the languages were first written by outsiders: after James Cook's recorded arrival in Hawaii in 1778, missionaries landing in 1820 soon gave Hawaiian a Latin alphabet and printed its first books. On Rapa Nui, the indigenous rongorongo glyphs incised on wooden tablets have never been deciphered.