45 
A Comparison of the Dialects of East and West 
Polynesian, Malay, Malagasy, and Australian. 
By the Rev. Georce Pratt. 
[Read before the Royal Society of N.S. W., 2 June, 1886.] 
Some of these dialects were collected from missionaries and some 
from books. The orthography is sometimes peculiar and arbi- 
trary, 2.¢.:-— 
In Lifu j stands for th, 
r ch, as in church, 
q for w 
x for ee as in loch, 
é is much like i in vin (French), 
6 as eu in monsiew 
The natives call a fowl either kutu or gutu. 
Malagas sounds o as u. — are partyin’ Eastern Polynesian 
from the Malay dictionary. Kanala 2 ew Caledonia) abounds in 
double consonants—ng, mb, kh, kw. It has three consonants 
se together—ndra, but the nd is rather a nasal d than two 
letters 
The Australian dialects (except Kamilaroi) are written aft 
Captain Cook’s plan, namely, giving the sounds in English letters, 
as beerai for birai. 
It will be observed that the East ae a dialects are sub- 
stantially branches of one language ; whereas the Western Poly- 
nesian dialects entirely differ, and have very Tittle i in common even 
among themselves. I found over 100 Eastern Polynesian words 
in the Duke of York Daet ctionary ; I account for the presence of 
these words to be owin lriftaw cting a 
ese people. Such, we biow. pooch in two instances. A large 
party of Tongans and Samoans reached Efate (New Hebrides) and 
