Five vowels
and a glottal stop.

01 · How it works

Every letter
is pronounced.

Tahitian is written with thirteen letters: five vowels and eight consonants. The 'eta, a glottal stop written like a reversed apostrophe, is a consonant in its own right, the catch in the throat in the middle of Taha'a or Teahupo'o. A macron marks a long vowel. Every vowel is sounded, so Papeete has four syllables, Fa'a'a three, and Punaauia five. Pronounce them all and place names begin to sound like what they describe: Papeete means basket of water, after the spring where the town began.

The Académie tahitienne, the Fare Vana'a, was founded in 1974 and keeps the dictionary, the spelling and the new words. A Marquesan academy has done the same for 'eo 'enana since 2000. Signage increasingly restores the 'eta and macron that colonial-era spelling dropped, which is why you will see the same name written two ways on the same road.

Decades of French-only schooling pushed the languages out of many homes. They are now taught in schools, sung at every Heiva in the massed choral form called himene tarava, and used by broadcasters and the academies. Nobody minds a visitor's accent. A greeting in Tahitian is noticed, and it changes how you are received.

03 · Names

Place names
are descriptions.

Fa'a'a, where the airport is, Punaauia, Taiohae and Rikitea all carry old geographies inside them. Moorea is the yellow lizard; Rangiroa is a vast sky; Fakarava's two passes are Garuae and Tumakohua; Teahupo'o is a name a village keeps whatever the surf press calls the wave. Tahiti Tourisme and the academies publish the spellings; this guide uses the forms the islands themselves use, 'eta included, where it can.