Tikopia love poem

My little love poem is translated here into Tikopia (autonym: Fakatikopia), a language of the Oceanic, Polynesian, Ellicean group of the small island of Tikopia (5 km²), in the Temotu province of the Solomon Islands.

Tikopia, closely related to Anuta, also spoken on Vanikoro, is considered an endangered language. Its total speakers number is perhaps 2,000 people, who also speak the Pijin of the Solomon.

The island of Tikopa is quite isolated, so contact, except from a few nearby islands, has been rather limited. As for Westerners, apart a few contacts during the 19th century, it was only in the 20th century that they intensified. This will make the island a particularly fertile ground for the study of indigenous sociology and culture.

This small volcanic island is surrounded by a coral reef that the Tikopians cross with their canoes, fishing being, of course, one of their resources.

The collective memory of the Tikopians of Vanikoro is the only one to preserve a bit of the tragedy of the Lapérouse expedition, since it was there that the shipwreck of his two vessels, the Boussole and the Astrolabe, took place.

If the unknown man of Vanikoro was the astronomer Lepaute Dagelet, which seems to be one of the two possibilities, then some bones of one of my very distant relatives would have been found in this part of the world.