French Polynesia Culture & Language

Polynesian culture here was nearly extinguished and has been deliberately rebuilt, which gives the contemporary version an unusual self-awareness.

Navigation

The ancestors of today’s Polynesians crossed thousands of kilometres of open ocean in double-hulled canoes, navigating by stars, swell patterns, cloud formations and birds, and settled a triangle of the Pacific larger than any other cultural area on earth. The knowledge was almost lost and has been reconstructed since the 1970s; voyaging canoes now make long ocean passages without instruments.

Tattoo

Tatau gave English the word. Banned by missionaries, the practice survived in the Marquesas and has been revived across the territory, with designs carrying genealogy and status rather than decoration.

Dance and song

Ori Tahiti — the fast hip movement of the otea and the slower aparima — is competed at the Heiva each July by large trained troupes. Himene choral singing in church uses harmonies unlike anything European.

Gauguin

Paul Gauguin painted here from 1891 and died on Hiva Oa in 1903. His work made these islands an idea in the European imagination, and that idea is worth holding at arm’s length.

The black pearl

Cultured pearls from the black-lipped oyster of the Tuamotu lagoons are the territory’s largest export after tourism, and the industry was built from almost nothing in the 1960s and 1970s. The colours — grey, aubergine, peacock green — come from the oyster itself rather than any treatment, and a lagoon farm is one of the few places where you can watch the whole process, from seeding to harvest, in one shed on stilts.

Food

Poisson cru — raw tuna in lime and coconut milk — is the national dish, alongside ma’a tahiti cooked in an earth oven, breadfruit, and excellent French bread and pastry.

French is the official language and is used in administration, schooling, business and signage. Tahitian — reo Tahiti — is widely spoken and has been revived in schools after decades of discouragement, and other Polynesian languages are spoken in the outer groups: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Austral and Mangarevan.

English is spoken in resorts, dive centres and the main tourism businesses, and much less so in pensions, shops and the outer islands. Some French is genuinely useful here and more so than in most Pacific destinations.

Tahitian is easy to say — five vowels, few consonants, everything pronounced. The glottal stop written as an apostrophe is a real consonant.

Useful: ia orana for hello, maeva for welcome, mauruuru for thank you, nana for goodbye, and aita pea pea for no worries.