Lea Faka-Tonga · Lessons

Lesson 34: Reported Speech

This lesson introduces ways to report what someone said, thought, or heard: strung clauses without a connective, the verb pehē (to say, to think), and the reportative word tokua (they say, it is said).

In English, reported speech often uses "that": "I hear that Fiji is beautiful." Tongan does the same thing more simply: it strings two clauses together with no connecting word at all. The first clause states the act of hearing, knowing, or believing. The second clause states the content.

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Lesson 33 · All 52 lessons · Lesson 35

The Tongan alphabet and pronunciation · Tongan greetings and what they mean · Tongan tense markers explained · Tongan word order · Saying "not" in Tongan · Tongan possessives · The Tongan ko pattern