Tongan Language - Literature

Literature

Tongan is primarily a spoken, rather than written, language. The Bible and the Book of Mormon were translated into Tongan and few other books were written in it.

There are several weekly and monthly magazines in Tongan, but there are no daily newspapers.

Weekly newspapers, some of them twice per week:

  • Ko e Kalonikali ʻo Tonga
  • Ko e Keleʻa
  • Taimi ʻo Tonga
  • Talaki
  • Ko e Tauʻatāina

Monthly or two-monthly papers, mostly church publications:

  • Taumuʻa lelei (Catholic Church)
  • Tohi fanongonongo (Free Wesleyan)
  • Liahona (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
  • Tonga star (Tokaikolo)

Read more about this topic:  Tongan Language

Famous quotes containing the word literature:

    What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.
    Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)

    Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.
    Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)

    “If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”
    “And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.”
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)