17G Mr Crawfurd on the 



in the New Zealand is " forehead," and its figurative " a 

 promontory." 



The Malayan words which have found their way into the 

 Polynesian, are far too few and unimportant to form an es- 

 sential portion of the language, the grammatical structure of 

 which is complete without reference to them. In point of 

 number, in fact, they do not exceed that of the English in- 

 troduced, within the last thirty years by the English and 

 American missionaries, into the dialects of the Marquesas 

 and Sandwich Islands.* These last, too, it may be added, 

 have undergone the same inevitable mutilations. Thus, to 

 give a few examples, a book has hecovae puke ; Tpsuper, pope ; 

 school, kida ; bread, palena; powder, paora ; a shoe, Mu ; 

 the cow, plfa (beef) ; the sheep, h'lpa; riches, mamona (mam- 

 mon) ; and a church {ecclesia), helipulue. 



Although the dialects of New Zealand, Tahiti, the Mar- 

 quesas, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands, are admitted by com- 

 petent judges to be the same language essentially, there still 

 exist between them some material discrepancies, both as to 

 sound and words. 



Thus, in the Tahiti, there are nine consonants, instead of 

 eight, as in the New Zealand. It has 6, d, f, and v, which 

 the last wants ; while it wants k, h, and w, which the New 

 Zealand has. The Marquesa has but seven consonants, viz. 

 k, m, n, p, t, and v; and the Sandwich Island is the poorest 

 of all, for it has but six, viz. k, I, m, n, p, and v. 



The proportion of Malayan words in the Marquesa and 

 Sandwich Island dialects is smaller than in the New Zealand. 

 Most of those words are the same, although often much 

 altered in form ; but I find at least twenty words of Malayan 

 in the New Zealand not existing in the other two dialects. 

 The pronunciation is also most correctly given in the New 

 Zealand, and ler.st so in the Sandwich Island. 



The language of the Feejee islanders was, for some time, 

 considered to be diiferent from the great Polynesian, but is 

 now well known to be only a dialect of it. I have seen no 

 vocabulary of it of sufficient length to enable me to form any 



* 1' Vocabulaire Oceanien-Franjais et Franfais-Oceanien par L'Abbo E mi- 

 face Mosblcch. Paris, 1833." Tliis work appears to be drawn from gnotl n;a- 

 tLnials, and is exccccliiigly \vcll pxecuted. 



