About

This dictionary was inspired by the work of Te Ipukarea – The National Māori Language Institute and Te Whare o Rongomaurikura - The International Centre for Language Revitalisation at AUT in developing the Dictionary of Cook Islands Languages (see http://cookislandsdictionary.com/) and, the research team’s commitment to support the countries of the realm whose languages are on the UNESCO endangered list, to develop online dictionaries to increase the accessibility of the language to their communities globally.

Wolfgang Sperlich gifted his Niue dictionary manuscript to The International Centre for Language Revitalisation in 2015 after members of the research team at the 2015 AUSTRALEX Conference at Massey University, Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand. Nogiata Tukimata, a young Niue postgraduate student sworking on her Master of Arts in Language Revitalisation and speaker of Vagahau Niue, was employed part-time to digitise the manuscript for uploading to the website. Nogiata completed this task in 2017. The transfer of the content of the dictionary from the print version to a spread-sheet was carried out between 2016 and 2017. There is further opportunity in the future to add new headwords to the dictionary. The dictionary has the functionality to add pronunciation of the headwords and attach images and videos where appropriate.

Fakāue Lahi Mahaki ke he pulotu ko Wolfgang Sperlich pihia mo e komiti gahua i Niue ke he tau fakauka ke taute ai e Tohi Vagahau Niue ne kua tohia he tau 1997. Ko e Atua ni ke foaki fakalgalo atu e tau monuina ke lata ai ma e tau gahua mitaki ne kua fakafitā a mutolu ki ai. Oue Oue Oue Tulou.

Tohi Vagahau Niue is currently housed within The International Centre for Language Revitalisation at AUT.