244 The Oceanic Languages Shemitic : a Discovery. 



diffusion of the Shemitic forms of speech, which he thinks 



the more likely, or a great indisposition to change. Latham 



(lb., ch. 54), encountering a similar phenomenon in Polynesia, 



interprets it in the same way, saying of the Polynesian 



dialects that " they have spread both recently and rapidly ;"" 



the sole foundation for his theory being the uniformity of 



these island dialects, and the consequent difficulty of 



conceiving of them as existing separately for ages, and still 



preserving that uniformity. Of the fact no one doubts ; but 



Latham is, perhaps, almost alone in his inference from it. 



"The unity of the Polynesian dialects," says Alexander 



(' 'Introduction " to Hawaiian Dictionary), " is still an 



astonishing fact. Tribes like the Hawaiians and New 



Zealanders, separated from each other by one-fourth of the 



circumference of the globe in space, and thousands of years 



of time, speak dialects of one language, and have the same 



customs and mythology. The laws of euphony in the 



several dialects which regulate the changes of consonants 



are so fixed and uniform that, a New Zealand or Samoan 



word being given, we can generally tell with certainty what 



its form will be in each of the other dialects." " It was the 



belief of Wm. Humboldt," he adds, " that the Polynesians . 



exhibit the original state of civilisation of the Malay race, 



when they first settled in the Indian Archipelago, and 



before they had been changed by foreign influence." The 



one fact which is truly wonderful and unparalleled is the 



substantial sameness of the language whose varieties are 



spoken in the numberless isles of Oceania. As this cannot 



by any possibility be accounted for by recent diffusion, the 



only other alternative is that of a peculiar inherent 



permanency or indisposition to change. This peculiarity, 



which is also Shemitic, is as such thus referred to by 



Whitney (ch. xii.): — " The scale of dialectic differences is 



much less in Semitic than in Indo-European ; all the great 



branches, even, are, as it were, the closely related members 



of a single branch. This is not necessarily because their 



separation has been more recent than that of the branches 



of our family ; for Semitic speech has shown itself much 



more rigid and changeless than Indo-European, or, it is 



believed, than any other variety of human speech." 



In comparing Oceanic and Shemitic it may be necessary 

 to say a few words at the outset as to phonesis. 



Speaking of the Malay, Crawford points out that " there 



