THE LANGUAGE OF HAWAII. 
55 
sired to bring out the fact that an object is given and not 
loaned, the words ke haawi take precedence, as: 
Ke haawi aJcu nei an i Jceia ia oe. 
When prominence is given to the idea that it is I and not 
some one else who gives, the form is: 
Owau ke haawi aku nei i keia ia oe , 
and so on through the five different arrangements, each lay¬ 
ing stress on a different idea and all perfect models of pure 
Hawaiian syntax. It cannot be denied that this flexibility 
gives to the language a power and subtlety unknown in the 
inflected tongues. 
We are all familiar with that inimitable scene in the 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, of Moliere, where a lover repeats in 
five different ways: “Fair Marquise, your beautiful eyes 
make me die of love.” The actor succeeds in revealing an 
ardent passion, but his French is intolerable. An untutored 
Kanaka from the South seas would have been able to bring 
out in his native speech all these shades of meaning, impos¬ 
sible in the cultured language of France. But the French 
language, proud mistress that she is, will not tolerate those 
liberties of construction that the Polynesian tongues not only 
permit but even court. The higher the civilization, the more 
acute are the forms of thought. The more exacting the rules 
of syntax become, the more limited appears the capacity for 
flexibility. 
It is a peculiar trait of the language that the same word 
may be used as a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. As an 
example, let us take the common word aloha, and we have: 
As a verb: ke aloha aku nei au i kuu hoalauna — 
I love my friend. 
As a noun: he aloha kona i kona hoalauna — 
he had love for his friend. 
As an adjective: he alii aloha no ia i kona hoalauna — 
he is indeed a loving chief to his friend. 
