CHAPTER II. 



RAPANUI SOURCES AND VARIETY. 



We can make no better beginning of the study of the phonetics of this 

 speech than by an examination of the mutations to which have been 

 subjected those words which the necessities of modern intercourse have 

 forced the islanders to naturalize. These words are of sources easily 

 recognizable as English, French, and ecclesiastical. Their original 

 forms are standard in our familiar acquaintance ; therefore they afford 

 us opportunity of examining the treatment to which this Polynesian 

 folk has had to subject them for its own currency. To the number of 

 66 they are entered in the dictionary with such type differentiation as 

 will manifest their alien character, and in that place the source of 

 each is indicated. For the purpose of this examination they are here 

 assembled in two tables. With the French we may properly and do 

 include the Latin and Greek borrowings, for all have come through the 

 same channel, the mission priests and brethren of the Congregation des 

 Sacres-Cceurs de Picpus. The source of the words of English origin is 

 less definite. We have information of no such settlement of English- 

 speaking folk on Easter Island as would foster the acquisition of this 

 score of vocables. A few, such as pakete, paura, uira, manua, tara, pent, 

 pott, may have been acquired by islanders drafted into service as boat's 

 crews of the whalers who once crowded those seas in their hunt for the 

 cachalot. A few others may have been acquired by contract laborers 

 in Tahiti, where the London Mission had introduced some English to 

 island life. In this group we may safely place hora, minuta, nira, eteni, 

 mitinare, himene, puka, ti, tiki, tokini, and tope there can be no doubt 

 as to the latter moiety, how they smack of the dissenting missionary! 

 But hoi in derivation from horse is a puzzle : in kevare we find the French 

 word for the same animal; hoi, therefore, did not arise on Easter Island; 

 it was not likely to be acquired in Tahiti, for puaahorofenua is the name 

 there in use. But here are the lists: 



ENGLISH. 



aniani (onion) 

 eteni (heathen) 

 himene (hymn) 

 hoi (horse) 

 hora (hour) 

 manua (man o' war) 

 minuta (minute) 



mitinare (missionary) 

 moni (money) 

 nira (needle) 

 pakete (bucket) 

 paura (powder) 

 peni (paint) 

 poti (boat) 



puka (book) 

 tara (dollar) 

 ti (tea) 

 tiki (sick) 

 tokini (stocking) 

 tope (soap) 

 uira (wheel) 



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