Let's work a bit on native content
(after all this grammar, let's have some fun !)
Here is a poster for the 2013 Pacific minigames that will take place in Wallis and Futuna this September.
Written both in French and Wallisian, it's an invitation for all the young volunteers to gather on July 6th for a big event, and for those who haven't volunteered yet to join.
"deviens volontaire" (become a volunteer) is the slogan in French.
Here is the translation of the Wallisian sentences :
"
Fakatahi ate kau volontaires" : together to the volunteers (?) (= let's all go to the volunteer gathering)
Notice the codeswitching, using the French word "volontaires" (I don't know if there's a Wallisian equivalent).
E faka'afe'i atu kotou fuli ne'e tohi o kotou higoa mo kotou fuli e fia kau ki te Volontaires o te faigao'i !"
= [we] invite all [those] of you who have registered and all of you who would like to participate as a volunteer for the preparation [of the minigames]
The sentence structure is very interesting, let's break it down and do the glossing :
"
e faka'afe'i atu kotou fuli ne'e tohi o kotou higoa"
"We invite all those of you who have registered" to register is translated as "to write your name"[on the registration paper].
"
mo kotou fuli e fia kau ki te Volontaires o te faigao'i"
"and all those of you who want to volunteer for the preparation"Notice that in both cases the relative preposition isn't introduced by any preposition (nor any punctuation). However, the verb is always preceded by the verbal preposition (
e, ne'e) that indicates present or past.
Kau is another tricky word, since it has multiple meanings. As a name, it indicates an "alignment", or a great countable quantity (
te kau Uvea : the Wallisian (people) ;
te kau solia : (all the) soldiers,
te kau papalagi : Europeans, etc.). However, here it's a verb that means "to join in, to participate in". As always, Polynesian words have various meanings depending of their grammatical function !
On the left, we can read "
Polokalama", a translitteration of the French word "programme"
Polokalama : programm
-
fakahinohino o te gaue a te volontaires : explanation of the work of the volunteers
-
fakahinohino o te atu Komisio fuli pea mo te'u gaue : explanation/presentation of the commission and of the works
-
tohi higoa ki te ako gaue : inscriptions for the training [that will be provided to the volunteers] (
gloss : write name to the learn work)
fakahinohino : to teach, to explain (surprisingly, K. Rensch in his 1984 dictionary mentions it as archaïc !)
gaue : work
Some words are not separated (ate, ote, ite, kite, etc.) but they are distinct words (a te, o te, ki te). This is very common in colloquial writing.
The last line announces the date of the event :
"
Moeaki Aho 6 o Sulio, mai te hola 8 ki te 11 uhu, i te Lycee o WF"
= Saturday June, 6th from 8 AM to 11 AM at the Wallis and Futuna high school
Here as well there's some French words : Lycée (but here they removed the accent, Lycee). A Wallisian transliteration could be
lise ; faka'uvea only has a general word for school, "
fale ako" [
house-learn]). WF means Wallis et Futuna, while the Wallisian version is "Uvea mo Futuna".
Moeaki : Saturday ; literally, "the day before" (Sunday, of course !) (French "la veille").
6 is "
ono" in faka'uvea.
Let's see how Wallisian expresses time and date :
As always, sorry for the long post, but I'm sure some of you at Unilang find these explanations helpful so as to compare faka'uvea to other Polynesian languages
Hoki toe piga pe i he tahi temi ! See you next time for more Wallisian