Mahiyan and Puiijnesian Languages ami Uaccs. 173 



gala, nearly one-half are substantive nouns, or names of 

 things. The pronouns amount only to two, the adjectives 

 only to five, and there is but a solitary preposition. In a 

 great majority of cases the Malay and Javanese words are 

 only synonymes, and the language could not only be written 

 with ease without them, but suffer little by their omission. 



I come next to the languages of the Pacific. A language, 

 essentially the same, is spoken in the Sandwich, the Society, 

 the Mai'quesas, and the Friendly Islands, the Lowe Islands, 

 Easter Island, and New Zealand — that is, from the Tropic of 

 Cancer to the 46'' of south latitude. This is one of the most 

 extraordinary phenomena in the history of language ; and 

 there is certainly nothing parallel to it, either within the 

 Pacific itself, or the islands of the Indian Archipelago, 



To illustrate this language, I shall take the Tahitian and 

 New Zealand dialects for examples, good grammars and dic- 

 tionaries of both having been published.* The French have 

 called this widespread language the Ouanic, and other Euro- 

 pean nations the Polynesian, which last, as most general, I 

 shall adopt. 



The vowels of the Polynesian, as exemplified in the New 

 Zealand, are five in number — a, e, i, o, u ; the diphthongs — six 

 ae, ai, ao, an, ei, and on ; and the consonants only eight — k, m, 

 n, ?'i,p, r, t, 9V, exclusive of the aspirate. Thus it has one vowel 

 less than the Malay and Javanese, and three times as many 

 diphthongs, while it wants no fewer than eleven consonants 

 of the Malayan series. 



The aspirate is largely used, and in a manner contrary to 

 the usage of the Malay and Javanese, for it must alwixys pre- 

 cede, but never follow, a vowel — consequently never end a 

 word or syllable. 



Every syllable and every word must end in a vowel, and 

 when foreign words are introduced ending in a consonant, 

 the consonant is either elided, or a vowel added. No conso- 



* A Grammar of the Tahitian Dialect of the Polynesian Language. Tahiti, 

 1S1.'3. A Dictionary of the New Zanland Language, and a Concise Grammar, 

 by William Williams, Archdeacon of Waiapu. Pahia, 1814. Vocabulaire 

 Oceanien-FranraiB ct Franyais-Oceaiiien. Par L'Abbc Hjniface Jlosblech, 

 Pari», 1843. 



