46 
PRESTON. 
him there. This is a complete sentence of six words in which 
not one consonant appears to mar euphonic beauty or to 
disturb the easy liquid flow of vowels, so dear to the Ha¬ 
waiian ear. 
The importance of the vowels in the Polynesian languages 
is such that if we open a Hawaiian dictionary we find, not 
the order of letters given in English, but a totally different 
one. First come all words beginning with the vowels a e i 
o u; then those beginning with the consonants h h l mn 
p w. This completes the list of all pure Hawaiian sounds— 
twelve in number. Nine additional consonants, h df g r s 
t v z, have been introduced from foreign tongues, because 
new words took root in the language. In passing, we may 
say that the Plawaiian consonants are probably the softest 
and most effeminate of the Oceanic group. In a dictionary 
of 502 pages, 111 were found devoted to the vowels, 387 to 
the native consonants, and 5 to the foreign ones, so that the 
words introduced are about one per cent of the total number. 
Cacophony. —There is a natural aversion in most languages 
to the consecutive repetition of the same sound, and espe¬ 
cially so between words. An example is given on page 52, 
under‘‘syntax,” of affirmation by means of the article he. The 
phrase he pono ole , however, is never pronounced as written, 
the o is elided, and we say he pon ole , just as the Spaniards 
in rapid speech use boca bajo instead of boca abajo. So 
strong is this sentiment that rules of gender are sometimes 
made to give way so that euphony mav be preserved, and 
the method observed in Italian finds application in Haw r aii. 
Instead of saying na alii, the chiefs, the Kanakas drop a 
letter and say na’ lii. The Italians say bel originale, avoid¬ 
ing the repetition of o; the French use mon amie and the 
Spanish el agua, in order to eliminate the same disagreeable 
effect. In English the combination is equally distasteful and 
we say an apple; yet the Hawaiians do sometimes violate this 
rule in the middle of words. Notice the artifices employed 
in the different languages to avoid cacophony. The Kanakas 
prefer elision; the French and Spanish are willing to break 
