Tongan is a Polynesian language and, alongside English, an official language of the Kingdom of Tonga. Around 100,000 people speak it in Tonga itself, and large Tongan communities in New Zealand, Australia and the United States mean a substantial share of speakers now live overseas. The language is written in the Latin alphabet with a small set of consonants; the glottal stop counts as a letter and is marked with an inverted comma. Tongan retains grammatical features lost elsewhere in Polynesia, and like several Pacific languages it uses distinct registers: everyday speech differs from the respectful vocabulary used for chiefs, and a further register is reserved for the monarch. It is closely related to Niuean, and more distantly to Samoan, Maori and Hawaiian.
Prism Linguistics provides Tongan translation, interpreting and transcription across the UK in 300+ languages. Whether you need a certified document for the Home Office, a court interpreter, an NHS appointment or a business meeting, our vetted native-speaker linguists are ready to help.
Tell us about your project and we’ll reply within 1 working hour with pricing and turnaround.
Get a free quote