Okina

The okina is a known Latin letter locally under various names (see below) and whose encoding is still dubious in Unicode and still dubious presentation. The character “okina” is used to mark a consonant glotale near to the Glottal stop (API: ) clean with many Polynesian languages and mélanésiennes.

Representation of the letter in some Polynesian languages

The representation of this letter is delicate because it can exist in various forms according to the sources, sometimes because of typographical difficulties and the ignorance, but especially because of difficulties or ambiguities of coding.

That has an impact on the orthography official of the Polynesian words, particularly in the proper names and toponyms, because these languages are minority everywhere where they are spoken (often in many local varieties), vis-a-vis usual conventions of the dominant European languages (French and English) which not only official but are largely used like Lingua franca .

The Tongan

Letter named locally fakaua (honorary form of the word fakamonga , “maker of Cough”).

Tonga however ratified the choice:

of the character Unicode U+02BB MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA (modifying letter collapsed comma).

The Hawaiien

Letter named locally okina (“separating”, which is the phonetic function of the glottal stop in API notation).

In a transitional way, the texts are encodés with the same character that into Tongan, but it is apparently not officialized with Hawaii where the question still is very discussed.

The Tahitien

Named letter eta whose coding is very dubious.

Some seem to recommend the same character chosen for Tongan (and the community hawaiienne seems to also go in favor of this character). However, for historical reasons related to the use of French and nonde English as official language and lingua franca among the speakers of the many French Polynesian languages (of which the tahitien), of many references used and use still conventions of the French apostrophe, although this one plays a very different part in French.

Moreover, the traditional shape of the letter tahitienne eta seems to differ from that of the character chosen for Tongan, the letter collapsed comma, which appears often turned of 90 degrees, in an intermediate form between the collapsed comma and the French apostrophe. The choice of this glyphe particular could correspond to the local will to satisfy the partisans with the two forms which can interpret it like a consensual glyphic alternative of one or the other. Out, neither one nor the other admit such an alternative which can be treated in an ambiguous way between the two modifying letters candidates (apostrophizes or collapsed comma). And this alternative form does not have clean coding in Unicode.

INSEE in France in its national administrative databases for the French Polynésie uses the French Apostrophe, i.e. is:

the character Unicode U+0027 APOSTROPHE (right simple ASCII code 39 apostrophizes); that is to say:
the character Unicode U+2019 APOSTROPHE-QUOTE (quotation mark-apostrophizes simple of right-hand side, often in the shape of figure 9, but not always); generally very well supported character, but whose appearance (right or curved, smooth or variable thickness, with or without head in ball, or the shape of corner) and even orientation vary from a style of police force to the other, which does not facilitate the distinction and can disturb the operation of the automatic apostrophes;

This choice exists for practical reasons for a long time for the use of the administration (use made on systems in French and not in tahitien, nor accepted by the government of French Polynesia, local governments posting very voluntarily the true letter each time possible for marking the specific and indigenous character well Polynesian languages).

However the selected characters have the large defect to be also punctuations and not letters being able to belong to a Latin Alphabet. One can note that the order of the Polynesian alphabets differs from one language to another: in French Polynésie, Wallis-and-Futuna, and in New Caledonia where all the Polynesian communities coexist, the letter (whatever the name which is given to him in each Polynesian language) is ignored tri primary education, as if it were a French apostrophe, and is treated only for the possible differences of the tri bearing tertiary sector on the diacritic ones (the tri secondary relates to the tiny/capital difference, but that does not affect the okina or eta tahitien). In the other Polynesian languages of country where English is lingua franca, the letter is classified at the end of the alphabet after Z .

As it is not certain as one can in the same way identify the eta tahitien (or the equivalent forms of the French languages Polynesian), which would justify a separate encoding (whereas Wallisian and Tongan have strong similarities and morphological roots and common phonetics: almost the same language, but a different alphabet). In addition, the diacritic ones used in French Polynesia differ from those of the anglophone Polynesian communities. What constitutes two distinct written forms, and thus two orthographies separated for the same oral roots.

Also, one rather often prefers to replace the official incorrect use (by INSEE) by characters similar, coded this time like a letter:

the character Unicode U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE (modifying letter apostrophizes) would be preferable in this case, because the French apostrophe is used for another use (it announces the elision) of one or more letters in certain contractions, or required by French grammar) and is not a letter in itself.

The use by L `INSEE does not constitute a usual recommendation nor an obligation for the tahitien or the true orthography, because its presentation strongly varies from one police force to another, and the identity of the letter eta is very different from that of the French apostrophe (which will be used to only reach certain administrative data).

In geographical toponymy, the IGN preferred the choice (transitional, nonfinal) of the collapsed comma, but the cartographies printed by the IGN for the local sale in Polynesia post the real character each time possible, like many tourist guides and signposts).

For the moment, there does not exist final consensus on the choice of the character to be used for the tahitien.

The Wallisian

Letter named locally fakamoga (“maker of Cough”)

Use and coding exactly similar to the case of the tahitien.

The māori of New Zealand

In New Zealand, the occlusive glottale is marked only in the dialectal alternatives of Wanganui and Taranaki, although with the standardization of the Maori of New Zealand, its notation tends to disappear with the profit from the " h".

The maori of the islands Cook

Called " 'amata " (" hamsah ") or " 'akairo 'amata " (" mark hamsah"), this one is seldom noted, although the occlusive glottale is phonologiquement relevant. (see Phonology of Maori (Cook islands)

Other approximations

One finds various other palliative approximations (not recommended) in all the Polynesian languages:

the character Unicode U+2018 TURNED APOSTROPHE-QUOTE (quotation mark-apostrophizes simple of left, often in the shape of figure 6 per rotation with 180 degrees of the other quotation mark-apostrophizes simple of right-hand side); generally very well supported character, but whose appearance (right or curved, smooth or variable thickness, with or without head in ball, or the shape of corner) and even orientation vary from a style of police force to the other, which does not facilitate the distinction and can disturb the automatic conversion of the simple apostrophes into typographical apostrophes.
the character Unicode U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT (grave accent with hunting); this use is incorrect but still enough running because it is compatible with coding ASCII (code 96 into decimal).
the character Unicode U+00B4 ACUTE ACCENT (acute accent with hunting); this use is incorrect but still enough running because it is compatible with coding ISO 8859-1 or Windows 1252 (code 180 into decimal).

Certain authors make an approximation by phonetic transcription, which is not inevitably correct for the API one from which the following symbols come initially:

the character Unicode U+0294 LATIN LETTER GLOTAL STOP (Latin letter glottal stop); this use is incorrect and its appearance (in the form of question mark without point) is too far away from the original Polynesian letter, and the letter reserved normally for API easily merges signal with a question mark.
the character Unicode U+02C0 MODIFIER LETTER GLOTAL STOP (modifying letter glottal stop); this use is very close to what would be wished for the tahitien, but its support is very limited, and rather held to API or the phonetic transcription of languages without orthography.

See too

External bonds

, complete description and discussion of the possible alternatives on anglophone Wikipédia.

Glottal stop
Languages austronésiennes
: Model: Okina to insert the character okina in a Wikipédia article.

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