20 'J III- lAiiigitagc's of llie Pacific. 



they afterwards sellled, they ahnost thoui^h Hdl ((uite completed the 

 ])rocess; there are onl_\ a tew words in their hm^ua^e that retain 

 the r. They also showed the same tendenc} as the Hawaiian to 

 substitute k for t, though the tendency did not proceed to the full 

 length of the northern language. Kanlni is the Marquesan salutation 

 ecjuivalent to the Hawaiian aloha. Yet the k sometimes disappears 

 in Marcpiesan ; for it is only from eight to ten degrees .south of the 

 equator and has sufficient moist heat to create languor in the organs 

 of speech. 



Thus we have in the different branches of this, the most 

 primitive of languages, fully developed a phonological law- as strict 

 as Grimm's Law amongst the Indo-European and far wider in its 

 application; it dominates not jnerely the explosive consonants, 

 (t, p, k) as in the Indo-European language, but the liquids and 

 sibilants, r, /, .y, sii and /;, and even the nasal con.sonants, ;/, ng. 

 If we know the form that a word common to most takes in any one 

 of the Polynesian languages, we know the form it takes in every 

 other, provided we know this strict sound law. There is one 

 exceptional sound, ch or iz, w'hich appears in Tongan and Moriori, 

 w'hilst Tongan has a h instead of the usual p. This must be due 

 to the long intercourse of Tonga with Fiji which had a phonology 

 more Melanesian than Polynesian. Strangely enough this ts sound 

 also belongs to Japanese, whilst the ch form of it belongs to Ainu. 

 But b is purely Fijian and is in fact in that language nih. 



This regularity of consonantal change in the various dialects 

 of Polynesian is a characteristic that completely differentiates it 

 from all those to the west, the Micronesian and especially Papuan 

 and Melanesian. In these there is phonological chaos in their rela- 

 tionships. As a rule neighboring villages in Melanesia and Papua 

 cannot understand each other's language though only a few miles 

 apart, whilst the Maori can understand the Rarotongan or Tahitian 

 or Hawaiian after a brief acquaintance with the con.sonantal 

 changes. And in Hawaiki this tendency to consonantal decay must 

 have been widespread, the change that is complete in one or more 

 of these groups occurs sporadically in all the rest. Take as an 

 example the loss of h which is universal in Tahitian, Samoan and 

 Hawaiian. In Maori it is quite common to find two words meaning 

 the same, one with the h. the other without it; two or three will 



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