CHAP. I.J INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 301 



space one language, differing only in dialect, is 

 spoken, and what a field is opened amongst the 

 various people for European intercourse, and for 

 the light of Christian civilization, we should rather 

 seek to create one Polynesian language, than to in- 

 troduce another tongue entirely different in its root. 

 Of all languages, the English is perhaps the one 

 they are least capable of learning, arid for this 

 reason that they have not sufficient sounds in their 

 own language to pronounce the English words, and 

 they want also some of the consonants. Judg- 

 ing from my own experience, I am of opinion that 

 all attempts to teach the natives the English lan- 

 guage can only end in their acquiring an unintel- 

 ligible jargon. 



The New Zealand language abounds in prefixes 

 and affixes. Both must be regarded as corrupted 

 words, the sense of which has been lost. It is well 

 known that they are common in the more western 

 dialects, especially in Hebrew. It appears that 

 euphony often forms the only rule by which in 

 certain phrases one particle is used and not the 

 other, and it is evident that their use is sometimes 

 quite arbitrary. 



There is nothing to lead to the belief that the 

 New Zealanders ever possessed the art of writing, 

 nor even that more simple mode of communicating 

 events to posterity by figures of animals and objects, 

 which has been lately discovered to be in use amongst 

 the most barbarous tribes of Northern America, and 



