The picture above shows us the typical accents of the Tongan language. The fakauʻa or glottal stop (a break between to 2 vowels) is traditionally written as an inverted apostrophe (‘). The toloi or macron (¯) is used to lengthen vowels. And the fakamamafa or acute (´) is to stress the ending of some sentences to add the unique Tongan definiteness.
Having these accents to appear properly on the internet, or even on your own computer seems to be a challenge to some people.
The glottal stop is not a strange character at all. Many languages in Polynesia use it as just an ordinary consonant. Likewise languages in Africa, Arabia, and so on. In fact it is better to say that west European languages are among the few on the world, which do not use it. Therefore there is in the Latin alfabet no character available for it. But in other scripts, like Arab, (there it is called the hamza) it is just one of consonants. Many languages use an apostrophe. However that is a source of confusion, because in English and French the same sign is rather used to indicate characters which should be written but are not pronounced (I would -> I'd, le armoire ->l'armoire), while the real glottal stop is to be pronounced but cannot be written.
To add to the complication: especially in British English the apostrophe is also used around quotes. More accurate: the inverted apostrophe (‘) to open a quote, and the normal apostrophe (’) to close the quote. (American English uses double quotes, continental Europe lower opening double quotes). The French way to quote, with guillemets, (« and »), would be so much better suited for use in Tonga.
There is a simple single (') and double (") apostrophe on the English keyboard, close to the return key (but unshift 3 and 4 on the French keyboard, shift 2 for the double quote on the German keyboard, and so forth). These are officially called (straight) single quote and (straight) double quote. They do not look nice, since they are straight, but at least they are very neutral and generally applicable, be it as apostrophe, glottal stop or quote. Before the computer replaced the typewriter, they were used, and nothing else, and life was simple in that epoch.
So it was still in the begin years of the computer. But the computer soon also provided the single and double quote left ( ‘ & “ ) and the single and double quote right ( ’ & ” ). Much more suited for quoting, if it were not that it was cumbersome to type them in using the correct shift-option keystroke. Luckily wordprocessors became 'smart' enough to automatically change your straight quote in a left (open) or right (close). Smart for America that is, utterly failing in Tonga.
The picture above shows us why. The left 'o'ou is with the straight quotes, ugly but acceptable. The middle one as it should be using the inverted apostrophe. The right one is with straight quotes 'intelligently' replaced by opening and closing quotes. Now imagine a whole Tongan story with everywhere, seemingly at random, apostrophes normal and inverted used as fakauʻa. Terrible. But that is what most people do, using Microsoft Word on Windows PC, for lack of…, of what? Intelligence? Care? Polepōle?
In the begin years of the computer, there was an easy solution for the macron: use a dieresis or umlaut (¨) above the vowels, and when printed on a low resolution dot matrix printer, the 2 dots melt more or less together into a short dash.
But then the high resolution laser printers came, and one was unable to bear the look of this easy solution any longer. Yet again for lack of intelligence, care or polepōle, many Tongans still continue to use this method. It is terrible, it just looks like amputated German umlauts.
This accent should be easy: it is already available on the keyboard, just the proper combination of option-e and then the vowel needed (on the English Macintosh keyboard), as in the example above, left. But for whatever reason Tongans seemed to be unable to do it. The best they could manage was to put the accent after the vowel, as in the example above, right. So at the end it came down to a compromis, with the accent not above and no after the vowel, but a little bit in between.
This has now been going on for almost 20 years, since the introduction of computers in Tonga. A whole generation of Tongans have grown up, who do not know any better, and think that this is the way it has to be. The computer has influenced the Tongan orthography. (Or rather the incompetence of some people to operate the computer properly).
Interestingly enough, nowadays we see a return of the fakamamafa to the original place on top of the vowels in some papers. Or do we? No, the real reason is that these papers do not know how to put the accent halfway. Incomptence to the extreme.
Nowadays there is no excuse any longer to hide behind. Grace to Unicode, a cross platform standard, which uniquely defines characters for many different scripts, even for some unknown languages, like the rongorongo from Easter island, now all computers can agree about the accents.
Are you ready to face the Tongan side of Unicode characters? If your browser shows this `oiaue (left of the '=' sign) with the toloi ¯, fakamamafa´, and the fakauʻa, then you are up to date with all your software. If you get boxes or things like that, you are not. The code to the right is the used HTML code.
ʻōīāūē = ʻōīāūē
óíáúé = óíáúé
ʻŌĪĀŪĒ = ʻŌĪĀŪĒ
ÓÍÁÚÉ = ÓÍÁÚÉ
Foremerly most infamous is MS Internet explorer (version 6 and earlier) on Windows computers, a combination made in hell. Some improvement can be achieved when you take Lucida Sans Unicode as your standard browser font. Otherwise better to upgrade to some more modern browsers. There are plenty to choose from.
By the way, in many indigenous languages, in Africa for example, the glottal stop is defined to be like the apostrophe (’, unicode 700), while in the Polynesian languages, Tonga included, it is the apostrophe upside down (‘, unicode 699). The difference is subtle, of course, and using the wrong one will not affect the readability of your text, but rules are rules. Both are available, make sure to select the right one.
Also note that the definite accent is written on top of the vowel, as the whole world does it, rather than in the lazy Tongan way halfway behind it. There is no simple method to change that, except to install special Tongan fonts, although the use of the right raised omission bracket (unicode 2E0D), would give another way for those fonts who have this character, and where it is not excessively large.
Decide yourself, if this shows up readable in your broweser, you have the right raised omission bracket: a⸍ e⸍ i⸍ o⸍ u⸍.
Tauʻolunga komipiuta makes available special Tongan fonts, complete with fakauʻa, toloi and fakamamafa (shifted or not). As nowadays most fonts provided with new computers have these characters already available, the need of special Tongan fonts has declined. But for those who need them they are still available, T$ 10 each. Do you need customised fonts? We can make them too.
We also have a Tongan spellings checker. It works best with Adobe Indesign 3 or later, but can also be used with Microsoft Word. Unfortunately the latter program has never been fully updated from its pre-unicode times to fully unicode aware, and as such is not fully functional.