RAPANUI SOURCES AND VARIETY. 33 



a and a final e as twice as frequently required in English borrowings and 

 a final i as four times as frequent. 



No Polynesian speech can accomplish the concurrence of consonants; 

 the spirit of the language does not tolerate it. In borrowing words in 

 which such concurrence exists two methods of treatment are in use to 

 obviate the difficulty. 



One, the method which seems the easier to the foreigner who seeks 

 to contribute necessary new words and that is the position of every 

 missionary is to split up the concurrent consonants by the interjection 

 of a light vowel, most commonly assimilated to a stem vowel next ear- 

 lier or next later in the word : this we find illustrated in teparanate, in 

 which the latter a is assimilated to the former, and in porokimo, where 

 the first o is assimilated from the succeeding and essentially stem o. 

 Or a vowel of a lighter color may be employed, merely as a septum, 

 as the last e in taper enakero. By such alien brutality we encounter 

 the uncouth forms of the type laikisipositadamapefela and ametamani, 

 (Reichspostdampfer and Amtmann) with which the needs of German 

 administration have defaced the pleasant rhythm of the Samoan, a 

 language sweet in the cadences of love and ample for the orator, sub- 

 missive but aghast at such Teutonic additions. 



In a second group of the borrowings we recognize with no difficulty 

 the motion of a less external principle, a motion which represents the 

 tendency of the island speech. This is perhaps less a matter susceptible 

 of positive proof than the recognition of the feel of the language ac- 

 quired in years of intimate contact with Polynesian speech and of close 

 study of its manners and methods. To these islanders the historic ety- 

 mology of the borrowed European word is a thing unknown, never to be 

 known, not in the least worthy of consideration. 



That we have written of a certain large reliance on the feel of the 

 language is not to be taken as indicative of any shirking of discussion. 

 It is possible in a few words to present the difference and to present it 

 clearly, a particular presentation of the general statements of the fore- 

 going chapter. 



In our Indo-Germanic languages the stem survives in its consonant 

 skeleton. In passing from stage to stage in descent from a common 

 ancestor the consonants have been subjected to a slow modification, 

 but it is so slight that the laws of Grimm and Verner are sufficient to 

 bring almost, if not yet quite, all to plain account. Far other with the 

 vowel elements ; these unstopped vibrations of the vocal column of air 

 undergo strange alterations, not only secular change in the course of 

 long ages but rapid change within the memory of a single generation or 

 but of a few. Our veriest school children, if permitted to think at all, 

 wonder at the prosody of the mutilated rhyme : 



I am monarch of all I survey, 

 My right there is none to dispute, 

 From the center all round to the sea 



