534 



Transactions.- — Miscellaneous. 



stand or communicate with each other; and in the New 

 Hebrides to such extremes is this differentiation carried that 

 half a dozen different isolated languages are spoken on one 

 small island in different villages. Not so with the P0I3'- 

 nesians. Although the Sanioan or Tongan dialect is incom- 

 prehensible to a Maori when spoken (and still more when 

 written), the close correspondence of almost all vital words 

 and the agreement in grammatical form prove that they 

 differ only as the Devonshire peasant differs from a Glasgow 

 weaver in speech based on a common Low Dutch dialect of 

 the Teutonic branch of the Indo-European family. 



Although the great bulk of my work has reference to 

 Polynesian proper, still occasional words may be met with 

 both in Polynesian and Malay which bear a very probable 

 affinity with Maori Vv'ords ; and, although it cannot yet be 

 decided which of these peoples have borrowed one from 

 another, yet, as isolated words having resemblance to each 

 other may be found from Madagascar to Easter Island, some- 

 times the interpretation given to these words by their pos- 

 sessors throws a startling light on possible derivations or 

 primitive meanings. 



The vowels, which have the Italian value, and nearly the 

 same sound in all the islands, preserve a general purity and 

 distinctness. In the examples I am about to select, a varia- 

 tion above the average may be found. In Maori itself a 

 variant rendering of vowels may be found : e.g., tiitai and 

 tutei, a spy (« and e) ; iim and win, to drink {i and «) ; 

 hanapa and kanapu, bright (a and u) ; hanohi and konohi, 

 the eye {a and 0) . 



The consonantcil changes are as follows : — 



IKE (Maori) and ikeike signify high, lofty ; paikeike, to 

 elevate; hoike, liigh, lofty; voike., to place aloft. There ar& 

 no Maori comparatives to show why ike means lofty, nor is 

 there any internal explanation in the formation of the word 

 itself. Still less does there seem to be any connection with 

 another meaning of ike — viz., to strike tcitli a hammer or other 

 heavy instrument. If we consult the Polynesian compara- 

 tives, we shall find that in the dialects wherein the k is. 



