An online course to learn the Tongan language, has been developed by Joshua Tanner, a former LDS missionary to Tonga. The course is for anyone interested in learning the language, especially Tongans living overseas who don't speak the language - and he's made it available for a token enrolment fee that never expires.

Josh told Matangi Tonga he decided to develop the Learn Tongan Speak Tongan website course for a few reasons.

“First my wife showed me how to set up the website and video the courses so she helped a lot.”

“Second, I was looking for ways for people to learn Tongan online and noticed there are not many resources, and the ones that are available are only very basic like the alphabet and some vocab.”

In addition, he said he “noticed that a lot of Tongan families move to English speaking countries and the children lose the Tongan language so I want to provide a set of lessons to help them learn Tongan online”.

“Hopefully it can help the parents out as well.” 

Josha developed the course series similar to the way he learned the Tongan language at the Missionary Training Center (MTC), based on the grammar principles.

The course is divided into three categories, basic, intermediate, and advanced, and took Josh several weeks to record all the lessons, only finishing the advanced section in August.

Josh studied and taught the Tongan language as an LDS missionary for two years and went on to become an instructor at the MTC for another year and a half, teaching over 100 students the Tongan language.

Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Josh no longer works for the LDS mission and now resides with his family in South Dakota.