Tongan Language (TON) – L1 & L2 Speakers, Status, Map, Endangered Level & Official Use (original) (raw)

Summary

Tongan is an official national language of Tonga. It belongs to the Austronesian language family. It is used as a language of instruction in education.

Dashboard

• Geography

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• Population

Details
This visualization shows the approximate size of this language community, using five general ranges for a quick visual sense of scale. Need exact figures? Upgrade to Essentials or Standard to see detailed population estimates for each language.

• Language Vitality

Indigenous Language Vitality CountBar chart showing vitality levels of indigenous languages in Tonga.

1. Institutional
2. Stable
3. Endangered
4. Extinct
   Details
   This graph shows the vitality of Tongan.

• Institutional — The language has been developed to the point that it is used and sustained by institutions beyond the home and community.
• Stable — The language is not being sustained by formal institutions, but it is still the norm in the home and community that all children learn and use the language.
• Endangered — It is no longer the norm that children learn and use this language.
• Extinct - The language is no longer used and no one retains a sense of ethnic identity associated with the language.
  These four summary levels have been derived by grouping levels in the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), which is the more fine-grained scale that Ethnologue uses to assess the status of every language in terms of development versus endangerment; see Language Status for a description of the levels of that scale. See also the pages on Development and Endangerment for more discussion.

• Digital Language Support

Details
This graph shows the level of digital support for this language (as measured by the method described here.

• Still — this language shows no signs of digital support
• Emerging — the language has some content in digital form and/or encoding tools
• Ascending — the language has some spell checking or localized tools or machine translation as well
• Vital — the language is supported by multiple tools in all of the above categories and as well as some speech processing
• Thriving — the language has all of the above plus virtual assistants

Family

It belongs to the Austronesian language family.

Existing Content

• Newspapers
• Radio
• Dictionary
• Bible (1862–1966)
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Ethnologue Country Digests

Ethnologue Country Digests are available for countries with five or more established languages. A digest is not available for Tonga, but you can still explore dozens of others that offer detailed language data, statistics, maps, and analysis not found in the online version of Ethnologue. Each downloadable pdf includes:

• Comprehensive country overview.
• Statistical summaries by language status, size, and family.
• Alphabetical listing of languages in the country, with in-depth descriptions.
• Full-color language map(s) for visual reference.
• Listings by population, status, family, and region.
• Indexes of ISO 639 codes and alternate language names.

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Contributions

This section reports contributions that have been received for the Ethnologue description of this language. Please read the community norms page for more information on contributing.