2 The Oceanic Languages Shemitic : 



the Malagasy, Malayan, and Maori-Hawaiian groups are 

 numerous and well known, and it is to them I am indebted 

 for my facts. The fourth group, the Papuan, is not so well 

 represented in grammars and dictionaries (indeed, only two 

 dialects, the Fijian and Aneiteumese, can as yet boast of such 

 works), but to make up for that it is the group with which 

 I am personally and very intimately, by years of long and 

 daily study and use, acquainted. I have chosen the Fatese 

 simply because I know it best. Much the best general 

 works on the Papuan languages known to me are the two 

 volumes of Gabelentz, " Die Melanenischen Sprache," Leipzig, 

 1860 and 1873. In the second of these volumes will be 

 found a very brief notice of (a dialect of) Fatese spoken on 

 the south side of Fate ("Die Sprache der Insil Fate"), and a 

 longer notice of another dialect of Fatese spoken on a 

 neighbouring island (" Die Sesake-Sprache auf Api "). For 

 the islands in the New Hebrides on which there are mission 

 stations, I am indebted to the missionaries for information ; 

 and for the others, and some dialects even of these, I have 

 nothing but the knowledge obtained at first hand from the 

 native speakers of these dialects themselves. 



3. in Malagasy is sounded as u in the other dialects ; 

 g in Fatese and Samoan is sounded as ng in Malay and 

 Malagasy. The inverted comma in Samoan represents " a 

 sound something between h and k." 



4. The Oceanic pronouns are found, e.g., in Fatese (see 

 Gabelentz on the "Sesake," as above) as separately used, 

 the separate pronoun ; as used only with a verb, forming 

 the personal inflection of the verb, the verbal pronoun; as 

 following and being the object of a verb, the verbal suffix; 

 and as following a noun and expressing the genitive or 

 possessive, the nominal suffix. The Oceanic pronoun has 

 no inflection of gender or of case, but it has an inflexion of 

 number. The Fatese, for instance, and Samoan have a 

 singular, a dual, and a plural. 



5. The Oceanic pronouns I, Thou, and He are in their 

 simplest form — 



1 ku ■ 



Thou, koy, ta, (k and t interchanged) 



He i or e 



The last is also demonstrative, in Fatese, meaning this. 

 These pronouns sporadically are found used in this naked 

 form in Oceanic, but generally they are in forms much dis- 



