Conversational Tahitian: An introduction to the Tahitian Language of French Polynesia Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Conversational Tahitian: An introduction to the Tahitian Language of French Polynesia? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Conversational Tahitian: An introduction to the Tahitian Language of French Polynesia. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Conversational Tahitian: An introduction to the Tahitian Language of French Polynesia ReviewIt's difficult to find a good grammar of the Tahitian language in English, but I found the kind of information I was looking for in D. T. Tryon's "Conversational Tahitian: An Introduction to the Tahitian Language of French Polynesia" (CT). It is, by far, the best English-language grammar of Tahitian I've been able to find so far, although it's pretty expensive -- the cheapest edition as of this writing was $200. Tryon also takes a stab at trying to present Tahitian grammar on its own terms without trying to force it into European grammatical categories. This is an improvement over earlier Tahitian grammars.
There's a good deal of information on the language's basic structure and vocabulary. Tryon provides vocabulary lists for the first 11 lessons of this 24-lesson book, and covers grammatical information ranging from orthography and pronunciation, verb 'conjugation' and simple sentences, to the structure of subordinate clauses; Lesson 24 provides a brief presentation on conjunctions. There are Tahitian-English and English-Tahitian exercises at the end of nearly every lesson, with a key to the exercises at the end of the book. Tryon also provides a list of nearly all the vocabulary introduced in the text at the end of the book. He even provides paragraphs for translation in the later lessons, with an additional 11 translation exercises under the section "Further Passages for Translation" after Lesson 24; translations for these are also provided at the end of the answer-key section.
As good as this grammar is, there are two flaws: (1) Lesson 2 "The Articles" provides information not only on the 'definite' and 'indefinite' articles, but also supplies a lot of material on articles used to distinguish the gender of various plant and animal species, groupings of various items (compare English 'gaggle of geese', 'bunch of bananas', 'flock of birds', 'herd of sheep', etc.). All of this latter material can be very off-putting, but if you just pass lightly through this part, virtually none of it appears in the rest of the grammar. (2) While each grammar point is illustrated with examples, the vocabulary used is limited and constantly repeated throughout the book, so when you get to the end of the text, you'll have only a very limited Tahitian vocabulary. As one potential remedy, I would recommend Sven Wahlroos' "English-Tahitian, Tahitian-English Dictionary".A more modern, linguistics-oriented presentation of Tahitian grammar can be found in Structure de la Langue Tahitienne [LCP15 (Societe d'Etudes Linguistiques et Anthropologiques de France)] by Gilbert Lazard and Louise Peltzer, but, obviously, a knowledge of French is required to use it. That said, I highly recommend Tryon's "Conversational Tahitian ..." for access to undeniably good information on this beautiful Polynesian language.Conversational Tahitian: An introduction to the Tahitian Language of French Polynesia Overview

Want to learn more information about Conversational Tahitian: An introduction to the Tahitian Language of French Polynesia?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now