Cotenso.—On the Maori Races of New Zealand. 393 
translations made for the Government of English documents into the New 
Zealand language are more or less faulty ; partly, no doubt, owing to the 
translator’s contracted knowledge of the English language, and partly to 
the faulty correction of such printed documents; as in the New Zealand 
tongue the typographical error of a single letter is sure to alter the meaning 
of that word, and not unfrequently the whole sentence. 
49. It is an astonishing fact, and one worthy of close attention from 
future philologists, that the Polynesian language, of which the New Zealand 
is a branch dialect, is commonly spoken by people scattered over one-tenth 
of the whole globe. Throughout an island area, containing eighty degrees 
of latitude and seventy degrees of longitude, from Stewart Island in the 
New Zealand group, in 47° S. lat., to the North Island in the Sandwich 
group, in 22° N. lat., and from the west coast of New Zealand, in long. 167° 
E., to Easter Island in 109° W., is this great Polynesian language spoken. 
It has also been detected* in names of places and in sentences used in the 
Island of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean ; although, from its not having 
been adopted by the missionaries there in their translations, it is considered 
(viewed from this distance) as probably belonging to an older form of the 
present Malagasi, or to a distinct and more ancient language. The Poly- 
nesian is therefore peculiarly an island language, being nowhere found on 
the mainland in either the east or west continents, or in any of the larger 
- semi-continental islands of the world. Another interesting fact is, that 
while there are many known dialects in use, some of which differ greatly 
among the various islands and groups within the above-mentioned area, the 
extreme outlying ones, viz. the Sandwich Islands on the north, New Zealand 
on the south and west, and Easter Island on the east, are those possessing 
the dialects nearest to each other, in several instances the words and sen- 
tences being identically the same.t Williams, of the London Mission, who 
spent many years among the islands, considered the principal dialects as 
being eight in number, viz. the Sandwich, the Tahitian and Society, the 
Marquesan, the Austral, the Hervey, the Samoan, the Tongan, and the New 
Zealand. The number of letters required to form an alphabet in each of 
these dialects is about the same; although while one, as the New Zealand, 
retains the k, the Hervey dismisses it; for the New Zealand wh, the Tahitian, 
Samoan, and Tongan have f; for the New Zealand w, the Austral and Mar- 
quesan have v. The nasal New Zealand sound ng is also used in the Hervey, 
Samoan, and Tongan, but it is rejected from the Tahitian, Sandwich, Mar- 
quesan, and Austral. The New Zealand & is also rejected by the Samoan, 
* By the writer, in 1835. 
"ae dialect of Rarotonga, one of the Hervey group, in 160° W. long., may also be 
50 
