Friday, November 3, 2017

From exploding penises to Disney...Oh my!


I watched Moana recently and really liked the depiction of Polynesians in the movie.

Compared to others, Disney has been relatively sensitive to cultural appropriation and other such things, and for the movie they even consulted many scholars of the Oceanic people. Disney also likes to create different versions of its songs in different languages, some of which are endangered.

I found a really good video showing one of the main songs in Moana being sang in the Tahitian language (Reo Ma'ohi), and I loved it. This is how Moana would actually sound like (well, if she was real). Also note that the term "Moana" actually means "Sea" or "Ocean" in that language, so you'll see that word in the subtitles too..

The Polynesian languages are all part of the Austronesian language family group, which also contains my native tongues, so I noticed some common words. (e.g. the word for "eye" is "mata"). The sounds are different though, because of the glottal stops and lack of phonemes in Polynesian languages. Their language does not contain a lot of phonemes...it only has five vowels and nine consonants!

Anyways, enjoy.

ps. I also like this other song from Moana in Tahitian...



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