150 DIALECTIC DIFFERENCES. 



gascar, are much more like the Polynesian languages than 

 is the Hova, spoken in the colder highlands of the interior. 

 Many of the coast words consist entirely of vowels, as in the 

 Pacific Islands, and these doubtless represent the most ancient 

 forms of the words. But the Hovas seem to have a feeling 

 after firmer and stronger sounds than these soft vowel-formed 

 words contain, and so they insert an z in the middle of many, 

 and add the syllables na, ha, or tra to the end of numbers 

 of the two-syllabled words spoken on the coast. Thus, the 

 coast words idho, iahdy, dia, ia, become izaho, izahay, aiza, and 

 iza in the Hova dialect ; and vola, fdsy, and ila on the coast, 

 become volawa, fksilca, and e\a.tra in the interior. These 

 phonetic changes are doubtless connected with climate, in 

 accordance with some still obscure laws of correlation between 

 temperature and laryngal structure. So much do the Hovas 

 like a firm closing syllable that they add some of the ter- 

 minals abovementioned to English words and names. Thus, 

 " sabre " becomes saba^ra, and two of my missionary brethren, 

 named respectively Briggs and Jukes, are always transformed 

 by the ordinary people into Biringitra and Jukitra ! 



Another case of dialectic difference among the Malagasy 

 tribes is the strange custom, common to all the Polynesian 

 languages, of considering the words forming the names of 

 their chiefs as fddy, or tabooed for common use. Now in all 

 this great group of tongues, proper names consist largely 

 of names of common objects — animals, birds, insects, plants, 

 trees, &c. But if any of these happen to form the name, or 

 part of the name, of the chief of the tribe, it becomes sacred, 

 and mast no longer be used for the name of that animal, bird, 

 or tree, &c. To this latter another name is given, often bein" 

 a descriptive epithet, or a periphrasis for the ordinary name. 

 Thus, the late Queen Basoherina was known before her acces- 

 sion to the throne in 186S by the name of Eabodo,""" but on 

 becoming queen she took the name of Easoherina. Now 



* It may be well to remark tliat in pronouncing Malagasy words the a, if 

 accented, is sounded like a in "father," unaccented, as in "at ;" the c always 

 like e in " fete " ; the i, if accented, like the 1 in "marine," unaccented, as in 

 "in" ; and the o is always like o in "move," except in the exclamation. O is 

 always hard, and the other letters have one invariable sound, s being always s, 

 and not like 2. The letters c, q, u, w, and x are not employed. 



