Thomson. — WTie^ice of the Maori. liii 



But in this branch of the enquiry we have more to do with the mode of 

 creating the sounds and articulations. This is, for the most part, effected by 

 a slightly opened mouth, by the breath, the tongue, and the lips. As the 

 vowels are expressed by the simply opened mouth, they have no other designa- 

 tion ; but it is otherwise with the consonants. In the languages under review 

 consonants are divided into labial, sibilant, palatal, dental, aspirate, and 

 compound articulations, viz., dento-labial and dento-palatal, and also, in a 

 small degree, palato-nasal. Neither the intonations of the Chinese, the deep 

 gutturals of the Hindustanee, the i-olling vibrations of the Tamil, nor the 

 harsh sibilants of the Arab have existence. Now, it may be surmised that 

 this principle prevails with primitive tribes as it does with single beings in 

 their infancy — that the more primitive or infantile they are the fewer will 

 be their articulations, the less their known wants, the less elaborate their 

 modes of expression. Thus, in the manner that water finds its own level, the 

 first outpourings travelling furthest, so we find in tribes and languages that a 

 parallel exists. I have already stated some cases of this in my former paper, 

 and I need only here allude to the furthest travelled of the Polynesian tribes, 

 viz., the Sandwich Islanders, who have only six consonants in their alphabet. 

 The particular tribes that we now have to do with, have, as regards the 

 Maori, only eight consonants, and as regards the Tongan, only twelve. In 

 observing children of any nation commencing to articulate, it will have been 

 noticed by most of you that labials are first mastered, as in pa and ma ; 

 probably next aspirates, and then dentals, then others according to the chapter 

 of happy accidents that make nature's operations so varied and interesting. 

 Thus, in the word " ship," one child may fall on a dental for the fii-st 

 consonant and another on an aspirate ; or for the word " food," one may choose 

 a labial, another a palatal. Hence we see a clue to the great variety of 

 articulation of the same word fossilized or preserved in difierent and distant 

 tribes who have parted in past ages. As an example of this principle I may 

 mention the case of a country-born lady in India, who had never left her 

 native country, telling us that " she was dirty, but her husband was dirty 

 more," meaning that "she was thirty, but her husband was more than thirty." 

 In thus speaking she merely used the articulation and idiom of her native 

 country. So much seems necessaiy, by way of preface, before we commence 

 at New Zealand, and institute a phonetic comparison between the Maori and 

 Tongan ; but before doing so I must also remark on the common transmutation 

 of vowels — many cases may be quoted in our English tongue — but confining 

 our examples to the languages under review, I may state that the Malay of 

 Menangkabau terminates his words with o, while the Malay of Malacca does 

 so with a, as sayo, saya. Again, in other dialects, i is transmuted into e, and 

 a into M, yet the words so altered may be from one root. 



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