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Measuring the Solitude: The Exact Location of Rapa Nui

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Geographic facts about the most mysterious land Easter Island is a small territory of mere 160 km2. For you have a good idea you can imagine an area equivalent to the size of a square of side length 12 km (although the island really has a triangular form). It is located in the South Pacific Ocean 3600 km away from the coast of Chile and belongs to this country as part of its territory. In a very simplified map below, only for rapid geographical reference purposes, you can viewpoint it through the vast extension of the Pacific Ocean. The Most Distant, Isolated, and Solitary Island in the World When you consider its size, its population—just 150 square kilometers and around 5,500 inhabitants in 2012—and its distance from the nearest inhabited land, it becomes clear that this is the most isolated place on Earth. The Most Isolated Place in the World: The Data to Prove It When I drew the simplified line map to show the island from a satellite perspective, I based it directly ...
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Beyond the Moai: The Story of the Rapanui Language on Easter Island

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It belongs to the Eastern Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, sharing close historical ties with languages like Marquesan and Māori. Who speaks the Rapa Nui language on Easter Island During my visit to Rapa Nui in the summer of 2009, I observed that the island's inhabitants predominantly speak Spanish with a Chilean accent. It is quite uncommon to hear the native population speak the Rapa Nui language, the tongue of their ancestors, in a spontaneous or casual manner. The sole occasion on which I witnessed it spoken naturally was in my hotel lobby, where two local youths, waiting to transport tourists' luggage to the airport, conversed fluently in their indigenous language. In this trip to there for a week, via Chile, I had a curiosity and a great interest to know the extension, degree or rate in the use of it as native language and some questions such as how people speaks it, if fluently, for instance. Incidentally, I had a doubt about how its populatio...
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