Roñoroño (Rongorongo)
Rongorongo, Henua's unique native script, emerged in the late eighteenth century after the island was first exposed to European writing. An unknown innovator developed the script using symbols from Henua rock art. Classical Rongorongo was used mostly for religious texts, myths, and incantations. The system was very intricate: some glyphs stood for syllables, others for words, still others for groups of words. Indeed, the scribes (tuhunga ta) were always making it more elaborate so that commoners would not be able to learn it.
Rongorongo began falling out of use during the Japanese protectorate period (1876-1919), largely because Japanese cana are much simpler to use than the labrynthian system of Classical Rongorongo. In the 1930s, King Hakapuna ordered a new Rongorongo to be prepared fit for all to learn. Modern Rongorongo is a sylabbic script like cana. It may be standardized, like the Ethiopic Abugida, so that syllables beginning with the same consonant sound are represented by similar graphemes. I have not yet begun to develop Modern Rongorongo, but believe me that it will come soon!
The reform of Rongorongo and a literacy program revived the script. It is taught in the island's primary school; literacy is approximately 80% and rising. Arero Henua has been rendered in both Latin letters and Japanese cana, but as both the West and Japan have had an influence on Henua in modern times, neither foreign system is dominant, and rongorongo has remained the nation's most common script. The ability to read Rongorongo is the basis for Henua citizenship.
A note on the term: the original name for the script was ta, a word which originally meant "carving a tatoo" and which came to mean "writing". Rongorongo means "cantor" in the Mangarevan language of the Marquesas Islands. It became the standard foreign term for the writing, and the Easter Islanders themselves use the term for those instances when they need to talk about their script as distinct from foreign writing. When a distinction must be made between the ancient and modern varieties, Old Rongorongo is Ta Tuai, Ancient Writing, while Reformed Rongorongo is Ta Ho'ou, New Writing.
Rongorongo began falling out of use during the Japanese protectorate period (1876-1919), largely because Japanese cana are much simpler to use than the labrynthian system of Classical Rongorongo. In the 1930s, King Hakapuna ordered a new Rongorongo to be prepared fit for all to learn. Modern Rongorongo is a sylabbic script like cana. It may be standardized, like the Ethiopic Abugida, so that syllables beginning with the same consonant sound are represented by similar graphemes. I have not yet begun to develop Modern Rongorongo, but believe me that it will come soon!
The reform of Rongorongo and a literacy program revived the script. It is taught in the island's primary school; literacy is approximately 80% and rising. Arero Henua has been rendered in both Latin letters and Japanese cana, but as both the West and Japan have had an influence on Henua in modern times, neither foreign system is dominant, and rongorongo has remained the nation's most common script. The ability to read Rongorongo is the basis for Henua citizenship.
A note on the term: the original name for the script was ta, a word which originally meant "carving a tatoo" and which came to mean "writing". Rongorongo means "cantor" in the Mangarevan language of the Marquesas Islands. It became the standard foreign term for the writing, and the Easter Islanders themselves use the term for those instances when they need to talk about their script as distinct from foreign writing. When a distinction must be made between the ancient and modern varieties, Old Rongorongo is Ta Tuai, Ancient Writing, while Reformed Rongorongo is Ta Ho'ou, New Writing.