Carmen Cardinali Paoa Carmen Cardinali Paoa Carmen Cardinali Paoa (born 21 June 1944) is a Chilean professor. She served as the Governor of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the government of president Sebastián Piñera, between 2010 and 2014. A native of the island, Cardinali hasworked as a professor in Santiago and also in Easter Island's tourism industry. Cardinali's predecessor, former Governor Pedro Edmunds Paoa, resigned in early August 2010 following the occupation of six buildings by protesters who demanded the return of land to the descendents of the island's indigenous Polynesian inhabitants. Lawyer Jorge Miranda was appointed as interim Governor until a replacement
Rapa Nui language Māori, as both languages are relatively conservative in retaining consonants lost in other Eastern Polynesian languages. Like all Polynesian languages, Rapa Nui has relatively few consonants. Uniquely for an Eastern Polynesian language, Rapa Nui has preserved the original glottal stop of Proto-Polynesian. It is, or until recently was, a verb-initial language. One of the most important recent books written about the language of Rapa Nui is Verónica du Feu's "Rapanui (Descriptive Grammar)" (). Very little is known about the Rapa Nui language prior to European contact. The majority of Rapa Nui vocabulary is inherited directly from Proto–Eastern Polynesian. Due to