Teegear. — The Aryo- Semi tic Maori. 400 



Nicholas, was to possess a most unfortunate basis whereon to 

 erect any kind of superstructure. As an example of later in- 

 capacity in regard to Polynesian, I may quote from Maxwell's 

 valuable " Manual of the Malay Language " (p. 10) : " A long 

 list might be made of common words not included in any of the 

 following groups, which are almost pure Sanscrit, such as baiva, 

 ' to bring,' " etc. Now, here we have a Malay word, bawa, which, 

 if allied to the Sancrit root rah, " to carry," is certainly not so 

 near as the Polynesian vaha, "to carry." Yet in the same 

 work (p. 3) is given a quotation from Crawford's " Malay Gram- 

 mar," in which the writer says: "An approximation to the 

 proportions of Sanscrit existing in some of the principal 

 languages will show that the amount constantly diminishes as 

 we recede from Java and Sumatra, until all vestiges of it dis- 

 appear in the dialects of Polynesia." The writer must have 

 known more about Malayan than Polynesian. 



Concerning those Semitic languages which Mr. Atkinson 

 brings forward as evidence how my method can be applied to 

 them, he at once frankly confesses that his knowledge of Arabic 

 is of such a quality that he has not even taken the trouble to 

 acquire the ability to read the written character. I have a 

 greater charge to bring against him even than indolence: 

 he does not seem to have understood the A, B, C of modern 

 philology, which separates the root-formation of the Aryan and 

 Semitic branches of language into two distinct systems : "The 

 root of Aryan verbs is all but invariably monosyllabic, consisting 

 of a consonant followed by a vowel, as in da, 'give,' or sta, 

 ' stand:' but the root of the Semitic verb is always trilateral, or 

 rather triconsonantic, and therefore necessarily dissyllabic — i.e., 

 instead of being, as in Aryan, an open syllable, it is always 

 close (as in qtl, 'to kill;' dbr, 'to speak;' ktb, 'to write.') . . . 

 Thus, in Greek, ypa^ua is 'a writing,' ypcupevg, 'a writer,' and 

 eypa\pe, 'he wrote;' whereas in Hebrew SeePheR is 'a book,' 

 SoPHeeR is 'a writer,' and SaPHaR, 'he wrote.' Again, in 

 Greek, fiaanXevc is 'a king,' and ifiaaiXevrrt, 'he reigned;' but in 

 Hebrew MeLeK is 'a king,' and the same word with other 

 vowels, MaLaK, 'he reigned.' Thus it is as if in Hebrew the 

 trilateral consonants — which were the only things which ap- 

 peared in writing at all, the vowels being left absolutely 

 unrepresented — were things too sacred to touch."* 



My contention is that the Maori language is founded on 

 the Aryan, and not on the Semitic root-system of trilateral 

 consonants ; that Maori is formed, fundamentally, on open 

 syllables of a consonant followed by a vowel, as Farrar and 

 Max Miiller both state that the Aryan languages are formed. 

 If Klaproth's theory of a primitive universal language can 



* Canon Farrar, "Language and Languages," pp. 354-56. 



