The Languages of the Pacific. 29 
to resist the conclusion that Polynesian came from Europe many 
thousands of years ago. 
It looks as if this simple, primeval language came in with the 
first-comers in the old stone age, the potteryless migration that 
alone brought women into the central and eastern Pacific. For it 
has remained the most primitive language in the world as far as 
phonology is concerned. It is the women that mould the sound 
range, accent and pronunciation of a language. The mothers have 
the senses of their children completely in their power during the 
plastic age of the organs of speech, from one to seven; they 
dominate the phonology as they dominate the household arts like 
pottery; whilst the men have the vocabulary in their hands, its 
scope and extensions. It seems almost inevitable then that the main 
features of the Polynesian tongue, especially the sound-range and 
the sound-laws, go back to the old stone age in Europe. In that 
case we must conclude that the Aryan language started on its career 
from twenty to twenty-five thousand years ago, and that philological 
students of Latin and Greek and the modern European languages 
must study Polynesian in order to see the type from which these 
sprung and the final analysis of their words and roots. This long 
period of time is necessary to explain the vast extent of the earth 
over which first Indo-European had spread even before our era, 
and the still greater extent over which Polynesian elements have 
spread. Both have more than half circled the world. And 1f the 
two are one, we have the most extraordinary language that the 
world has seen. And out of the divisions of it, English is drawing 
towards becoming as nearly the universal language as cne language 
can ever be. It is a great thing to have for one’s language one of a 
type that has, as Polynesian has, traveled across half the world by 
land and then doubled back as far by sea. 
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