Nēpoki: Difference between revisions

|pronunciation = [neːpoki]

|region = Polynesia

|speakers = ~ 200  

|iso1 =

|agency       =  

Around 800 B.C., Nepokians and Polynesians arrived at Samoa. This proximity was underlined by the big changes, primarily phonological, which happened in the transition from Old to Middle Nepokian. Though they were deep and Nepokian sounded less and less Indo-European, under certain circumstances some consonant clusters (which are alien to Polynesian) into Late Middle Nepokian. This stage ceased to exist when all clusters were finally broken up and r, s and t gradually shifted to l, h and k.

In the late 18th century, when the Europeans made their first notices about this tongue, some people still pronounced the Nepokian l in certain circumstances as r. Though formerly classified as arbitrary, it was rather a late Middle Nepokian pronunciation. This wasn't the case with s and h, or t and k, as their sound shifts were finished centuries before. Linguists set the transition from Middle to New Nepokian in the 15th century.  

Modern Nepokian is spoken since the arrival of German colonialists in Southern Pacific. Phonological (i.e., múhuki becoming mūki 'five', a very rare exception as there are no such contractions elsewhere) and grammatical changes are few, but the vocabulary was enriched dramatically.

Most Nepokian varities prefere the verb-subject-object structure, though others exhibit VOS pattern. Adjectives usually follow the noun they modify (e.g. "king new"), but patterns like "new king" also occur and are subject to stylistic preferations.