LANGUAGES AND HARES. 
205 
The proportion of Malayan words in the Marquesa and Sandwich 
Islands dialects is smaller than in the New Zealand. Most of those 
words are the same, although often much altered in form ; but I find 
at least twenty words of Malayan in the New Zealand not existing 
in the other two dialects. The pronunciation is also most correct¬ 
ly given in the New Zealand, and least so in the Sandwich Island. 
The language of the Feejee islanders was, for some time, consi¬ 
dered to be different from the great Polynesian, but is now ’well 
known to he only a dialect of it. I have seen no vocabulary of it 
of sufficient length to enable me to form any judgment of it. Its 
alphabet, however, has been correctly given, and this consists of the 
usual five vowels, and not of six or nine consonants like the Poly¬ 
nesian, but of fifteen, viz., b, d,f, g,j, k , l , m, n, n, p, r. s, t , and 
o, which, for variety of intonation, puts it on an equality with the 
Wugi of Celebes, although it leaves it, by four letters, short of the 
Malay and Javanese.* The Feejee language contains Malayan words, 
like the other languages of Polynesia ; but in what proportion I am 
not aware. 
Our materials for forming a judgment of the languages of the Ne¬ 
gro races are, as might be expected, from the rudeness or the fero¬ 
city, or remoteness of these tribes, extremely imperfect. One of the 
longest lists of words of any of their languages which I have seen, is 
one furnished to myself, in 1811, by the then minister of the Raja 
of Queda. It is of the language of the Samang of the Jarai, one of 
the highest of the mountains of tire Malay Peninsula. It consists of 
176 words, to which I add twenty- one of the language of the same 
people, from the work of Mr. Marsden.f 
The phonetic system of the language of the Samang is not very 
remote from that of the Malay and Javanese ; but it seems to abound 
more in aspirates, gutturals, and monosyllables. Syllables and words 
* Introduction to a Grammar of the Tahitian Dialect of the Polynesian 
Language. Tahiti, 1833. An Australian Grammar, Are. Arc., byL. L. 
Threlkeld. Sydney, 1843. Narrative of the United States’ Exploring Ex¬ 
pedition, 1847. 
f “ On the Polynesian and East Insular Languages.” Miscellaneous 
"Works. 1834. 
