Fonite Tonga

The following font faces are part of experimentation with Font/Modification Tools to complement the Tongan Keyboard macros. If you find them useful please contact me. The font modifications have been necessary because few fonts support the complete set of characters which include the accented vowels used in the Tongan language. To further complicate matters, there is no simple manner by witch to access the accented vowel. Ko e fakat&aumlt&auml ‘o e fonite ki he lea fakaTonga.

Sample The 1st line of text shows the Tongan accents as they should appear on the screen and printed page, as a straight line. The compromise many are forced to make is to use the dotted line, as shown in the second line of text.

Ko e fonite ke tokoni ki hono ma’u totonu ‘a e ngaahi faka’ilonga faka-Tonga ‘o hange ko e toloi ‘o ‘ikai ko e toti toti.

Download and install the following font files to better view the translation works.

**Collection** TG Verdana
TG Arial
TG Times New Roman
 		 TG Century Schoolbook
TG Copperplate Gothic Bold
TG Copperplate Gothic Light
TG Comic Sans
TG Edwardian Script
TG Franklin Gothic Medium		 TG Harrington
TG Harlow Solid
TG Old English
TG Parchment
TG Pristina
TG Tuunga Fasi
  TG Base Collection TGFonts 2nd TGFonts 3rd

The Tonga Language (though I am not a scholar in this area) uses the toloi (macron?) to draw out vowels in pronunciation and this consequently changes the meaning of the word. Words such as displayed above (eg. kaka) varies significantly in meaning depending on how the speaker pronounces the different a vowels. The microcomputer revolution has not supported the Tonga “toloi” in a convenient way which has lead to document meanings being dependent on how the reader percieves the intended word.

The fonts in the download provide the accents within the standard Macintosh/Windows character-space. The Windows 95 and Unicode fontspace provides support for the accented vowels (macron) used in the Tongan language, unfortunately it is still very inconvenient to get those characters into your word-processing document.