| This website is a work of fiction, part of the collaborative constructed world of Ill Bethisad. It is not intended to reflect reality or the creator's opinions on current issues. |
| Spnsored by the Tourism Advisorate, Council of Te Pito O Te Henua, in cooperation with the Commission for Offshore Preservation, Ecotopic Republic of Oregon. |
| Arero Henua Language of the Land |
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| Last updated 13 December 2008 by Ben Karnell |
| Arero Henua, meaning "Tongue of the Land", is Henua's national language. In our own timeline, this language is called Old Rapanui. *Here*, modern Rapanui reflects the massive changes to the language caused by a nineteenth-century attempt to evacuate the islanders to Tahiti. The expatriates came back home with a language heavily influenced by Tahitian. Minority languages spoken on Henua include Tahitian, Kanawikian (Hawaiian), Tuamotuan, and Quichwa (Inkan), all of which are spoken by small groups of immigrants. Japanese, Castilian, and Oregonian English are important tourist languages and are taught in the national school. Rongorongo Rongorongo, Henua's unique native script, emerged in the late eighteenth century after the island was first exposed to European writing. An unknown innovator developed the script using symbols from Henua rock art. Classical Rongorongo was used mostly for religious texts, myths, and incantations. The system was very intricate: some glyphs stood for syllables, others for words, still others for groups of words. Indeed, the scribes (tuhunga ta) were always making it more elaborate so that commoners would not be able to learn it. Rongorongo began falling out of use during the Japanese protectorate period (1876-1919), largely because Japanese cana are much simpler to use than the labrynthian system of Classical Rongorongo. In the 1930s, King Hakapuna ordered a new Rongorongo to be prepared fit for all to learn. Modern Rongorongo is a sylabbic script like cana. It may be standardized, like the Ethiopic Abugida, so that syllables beginning with the same consonant sound are represented by similar graphemes. I have not yet begun to develop Modern Rongorongo, but believe me that it will come soon! The reform of Rongorongo and a literacy program revived the script. It is taught in the island's primary school; literacy is approximately 80% and rising. Arero Henua has been rendered in both Latin letters and Japanese cana, but as both the West and Japan have had an influence on Henua in modern times, neither foreign system is dominant, and rongorongo has remained the nation's most common script. The ability to read Rongorongo is the basis for Henua citizenship. A note on the term: the original name for the script was ta, a word which originally meant "carving a tatoo" and which came to mean "writing". Rongorongo means "cantor" in the Mangarevan language of the Marquesas Islands. It became the standard foreign term for the writing, and the Easter Islanders themselves use the term for those instances when they need to talk about their script as distinct from foreign writing. When a distinction must be made between the ancient and modern varieties, Old Rongorongo is Ta Tuai, Ancient Writing, while Reformed Rongorongo is Ta Ho'ou, New Writing. Transliterations The Henua laguage has official transliterations in the three great trans-Pacific scripts: the Roman alphabt (Ta Romana), the Cyrillic alphabet (Ta Kurira), and the Japanese Cana (Ta Nihone). Of these, the Ta Nihone is the oldest, dating from Henua's days as a Japanese protectorate. The Romanization was created by Castilian-speaking missionaries from South America, while the Cyrillization was established only recently, when Henua and Oregon began closer relations with one another. A detailed descrition of all three transliterations is available off-site: see Henua Transliterations on the IBwiki. |
| Henua Names |
| As in much of the precolonial world, personal names on Henua were informal and lacked strict rules before contact with colonial powers. Names were standardized in 1879-1880 when Japan conducted a census of its new protectorate on Easter Island. The names of the Henua were recorded in the Japanese fashion: family names followed by personal name. Family Names Henua society is divided into a number of kin groups of different sizes. All are patrilinial. The entire nation is divided into seven mata, usually called "clans" and consisting of over a thousand people. Each clan is divided into large sub-clans or lineages, called ure, which are further divided into extended families, mohingo. Traditionally, mata are endogamous while ure are exogamous; that is, one wants to marry someone in one's own mata, but not in one's immediate ure. In today's rebellious times, of course, young people are running off with all sorts of folk from different clans, frustrating their elders to no end. It should be noted that "ure" also means "penis" and is common as a personal name among non-Christians. In the field of Henua written and stage comedy, the obvious pun has been utterly worked to death The original Japanese census assigned people four names: mata, ure, mohingo, and individual name, in that order. Use of the mata name never really caught on, if only because the name of a person's ure tells the name of his or her mata to anyone familiar with the island's social structure. Everyone knows that the Hahai are part of the Miru clan, for example. So Henua names today follow the order: ure name, mohingo name, personal name. Henua's current Chief Advisor is Kino Rano'ika Pa'oa. Kino is her ure, Rano'ika her mohingo, and Pa'oa her personal name. For day-to-day interactions, most Henua use only ure name plus individual name. The ure name suffices for most interactions and, importantly, helps identify whom one can seek as a potential mate. The brother-in-law of the Chief Advisor, Kino Rano'ika Ure, is usually known as Kino Ure. People in the public eye often use only their mohingo names and not ure names. Chief Advisor Rano'ika Pa'oa, for example, comes from the Rano'ika mohingo and seldom uses her ure name for public purposes. This allows public figures to be readily identifiable by their family names, as in, "Advisor Rano'ika's an idiot." In this patrilineal society, married women take the family names of their husbands. The status of immigrants to Henua remains unclear. Some newcomers over the years have been absorbed into clans, but all seem to have kept their own surnames, except of course for women who marry and take the family names of their Henua husbands. Personal Names As in most of Polynesia, individual names on Henua are not gender-specific. Pa'oa, for example, means :soldier", which in other cultures might be an uncommon name for a female. Many personal names are restricted to certain mata or ure. Before 1808, certain royal names were restricted to firstborn sons in the royal Hinga ure of the Miru clan. Since the clans were declared equal in 1808, the chiefly families in each mata have named their sons after past Henua kings, in a sense to advertise their potential to become king. The current King Nga'ara III, for example, has a name that once was restricted to the Miru, although he himself is of the Ra'a clan. Some Christian missionaries to Henua had their converts adopt Christian (Western) names upon baptism, but this practice was not as universal as it was *here*. However, many Henua Christians choose to give their children biblical or saintly names to express piety. Christian names, unlike traditional names, are gender-specific. They are of course "Henuafied," as in Tepano (Stephen), Tamu'era (Samuel), and Repaka (Rebecca). Some Christians have devised gender-neutral names based on Christian concepts such as Grace or Holiness (I don't know the Henua words for these ideas). |
| henua.tk |