Sentence Structure
In English there are several parts that make up a sentence that if understood will make it easier
to understand Tongan grammar
noun - a thing, person, or place
pronoun - he, she, it are preposed; him, her, or it are postposed. That means basically that a pronoun before the verb is different than after the verb. that is why when we answer the phone it is appropriate to say “this is he/she” instead of saying “this is her/him.” because there is no verb in that sentence, hence a preposed pronoun is correct.
verb - the action in the sentence.
subject - a noun that is doing an action
object - a noun that is being acted upon
articles - a, an, the
example: She drove the car with mary and with him to the store .
"She" is a preposed pronoun and also the subject
"drove" is the verb
"the" is an article
"car" is the object because it was the noun that she "drove"
"mary" is a noun
"him" is a post-posed pronoun
"to the store" is a prepositional phrase starting with to which is a preposition and the is an article. We will learn about later in this lesson
store is not an object because the verb is not acting upon the store.
so you can see that this sentence has a lot of stuff going on in it even though it seems so simple in english
lets see how we would say this in Tongan.
Na'a ne faka'uli 'a e me'alele mo mele pea mo ia ki he falekoloa.
So drove is past tense so we start with na'e, because we are going to use a pronoun after the tense marker we have to change it to na'a
ne is the preposed pronoun for she/he/it.
faka'uli means to drive
'a is a focus marker which we will learn about today
e comes after the 'a focus marker which is the same as the article "the."
me'alele means car
"mo" means "with" when talking about people. Aki means with if the translation in english would be "by the means of" like i hit her with the bat. that would be aki because you could exchange the word with in english with the phrase by the means of and it would make sense. you wouldn't say you went with (by the means of) jerry to the store. Hence you use the word mo.
mele is a noun
"pea mo" means “and with”
ia is a postposed pronoun for he/she/it.
ki means "to" in a prepositional form. if you say "I went to tonga" that is different than saying "i want to go there." "to go" is an infinite verb meaning it has to in front of it and in Tongan "to" as a preposition is a different word than "to" when acting as a part of an infinite verb. An infinite verb in english is when we say “we want to go”, or “he likes to eat.” It’s when we put the word to before a verb. In Tongan the word we use is “ke” so we would say “oku tau loto ke alu” or ‘oku ne sai ‘ia ke kai.” this to is different than saying we are going to somewhere.
some rules for "ki." when saying "to" as a preposition the word ki is used when the object is a common noun or proper noun that is not a person. kia is used when the object is a person, and kiate is used if the object is a pronoun. if in english you were going to say "to the" it would be "ki he" in tongan. The "he" translates to the in a prepositional phrase.
This leads us to prepositions
Prepositions
There are really only a few main propositions in Tongan we need to know
ki - to
‘i - in, on, at
mei - from
if adding a the after one of these words the word in Tongan to use will always be “he”
the rules with ki applies with ‘i and mei as well.
ki (he) ‘i (he) mei (he) for any noun besides people
kia ‘ia meia for people
kiate ‘iate meiate for pronouns
examples:
Te u alu ki lotu te u alu ki he falelotu.
I will go to church I will go to the church building.
na’a ku lea kia viliami na’u ku lea ki he faiako.
i spoke to william i spoke to the teacher.
‘oku ne lele meiate ‘ia ‘oku ne lele mei he kuli.
she is running from him/her/it. she is running from the dog.
Most prepositions we use in english are eliminated in Tongan because instead of saying above or under they say on above or in below. basically the ‘i preposition comes before words olunga means up and lalo means down. so in Tongan we just say its ‘i olunga or ‘i lalo meaning above or below. That might be a bit confusing but it explains why there are so few prepositions in Tongan.
A good rule for prepositions is if it wouldn’t make sense as either “to” or “from” then using ‘i should be correct. it loosely translates to “in, on, or at,” but it fills in the gaps and means other things as well where as “ki” and “mei” only mean “to” or “from.” so when in doubt using ‘i should be fine.
a quick rule with ‘i. when using verbs of feeling such as love or hate in english we would say i love her but in tongan a verb will always have to have a prepositional “to” so in tongan you would be saying I love to her. However when using verbs of feeling, instead of using the ki work we use ‘i. It might be because a be the translation should be something like I love in her or i love at her. But a lot of people will say “ ‘oku ou ‘ofa atu kiate koe.” when it should be ‘oku ou ‘ofa atu ‘iate koe.”
FOCUS MARKERS
Focus markers do not translate to or from english. they are unique to Tongan and therefore are a bit hard to understand their purpose. The name helps us though. The purpose of a focus marker is to focus the verb or action of the sentence onto an object. the main purpose for them is that in English if you said that Mary hit mark there is a specific order that the sentence needs to be in for it to make sense. if you said mark hit Mary the sentences meaning completely flips this isn't the case in Tongan. Na’e ta’i mele maake. would be what the sentence is without tense markers. that could mean Mele hit Maake or Maake hit Mele we don't' know. So there are focus markers to make since of it. The noun doing the action or the subjects gets an “e” before it. the person receiving the action or the object gets an “a.” This is what's called a transitive sentence, when a subject is performing an action to an object. That is the only time we use the “e” and “a” focus markers in a sentence. In a normal sentence where there is a subject that is not acting on an object then we put an “a” before the subject. for example: “e lele ‘a Mele ki he falekai.” or Mele will run to the restaurant. that is different than “na’e taa’i e Mele ‘a Maake.” which again means Mele hit mark.
‘a will get a an “e” after it if the article “the” is needed
“e” will get a “he” after if the article “the is needed
na’e lele ‘a e vaka ki he motu. - the boat ran to the island
na’e ha’i e he kakai ‘a e palofita. - the people tied the prophets.
This is one of the hardest concepts to get down as far as speaking tongan and forming sentences in your mind, but with practice it comes pretty quickly.
The special tense marker
Kuo functions exactly as a tense marker meaning that it goes at the beginning of a sentence.
Kuo makes a sentence into the present perfect tense. What that means is that it puts a “has” or “have” into the sentence. Examples. Kaloni has gone to the store. I have gone to the store. So in Tongan. We would say Kuo alu ‘a Kaloni ki he falekoloa. As an aside after the word kuo the pronoun I is said as “u” the same as the “te” tense marker. i.e. Kuo u alu ki he tahi. I have gone to the beach.
NEGATIVE SENTENCES
To make a sentence a negative we add two words after the tense marker. So in English If we wanted to make a sentence negative we would say “no she didn't go to the store.” In Tongan we keep the tense marker at the front of the sentence to denote the tense. Then we follow that with “ikai ke” and then the rest of the sentence is the same
examples:
She went to the store - Na’a ne alu ki he falekoloa
no she didnt go to the store - na’e ikai ke ne alu ki he falekoloa
he ate the pig - na’a ne kai ‘a e puaka
he didnt eat the pig - na’e ikai ke ne kai ‘a e puaka
mary likes the movie - ‘oku sai ‘ia e mele ‘a e faiva
mary doesnt like the movie - ‘oku ikai ke sai ‘ia e mele ‘a e faiva.
He has ate a pig- kuo ne kai ‘a e puaka
he has not ate a pig - kuo ikai ke ne kai ‘a e puaka
We can see that the underlined portions of the sentences are identical.
Because a pronoun is not directly following the tense marker in those sentences we use the original tense markers “na’e” and “e” instead of “na’a” and “te.”
Now try to translate these sentences using what we learned
Peter loves to eat pig
Sarah didn’t go to church
Mark chose the fish to eat.
vocab words :
peter - pita
loves - ‘ofa
eat - kai
pig - puaka
sarah - sela
go - alu
church - lotu
mark - maake
chose - fili
fish - ika
I realize that there might be some typos especially with words that need a faka u'a or fakatoloi.
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