76 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
is acquired, and the facility with which it is used by the 
natives themselves, are evidences of its accuracy and its 
utility. 
The Missionaries have been charged with affectation 
in their orthography, &c. but so far from this, they have 
studied nothing with more attention than simplicity and 
perspicuity. The declaration and the pronunciation of 
the natives formed their only rule in fixing the spelling of 
proper names, as well as other parts of the language. 
They aimed at precision, and having adopted the English 
character, affixed to each letter a distinct and invariable 
sound. The letters of each word constitute the word, 
so that a person pronouncing the letters used in spelling 
a word, would, in fact, pronounce the word itself. Pur¬ 
suing this plan, they were under the necessity of pre¬ 
senting to the natives a mode of spelling different 
from that which had been given to Europeans in the 
narratives of early voyagers. They did this reluc¬ 
tantly. Their early associations and strongest predi¬ 
lections were all in favour of Otaheite, Ulitea, Otahaa, 
&c., and it was only from the firm conviction that such 
were not the native designations of these islands, that 
they adopted others. 
As the native names of persons and places will un¬ 
avoidably occur in the succeeding pages, a brief notice of 
the sounds of the letters, and the division of some of the 
principal words, will probably familiarise them to the 
eye of the reader, and facilitate their pronunciation. 
The different Polynesian dialects abound in vowel 
sounds perhaps above any other language; they have 
also another striking peculiarity, that of rejecting all 
double consonants, possessing invariably vowel termina¬ 
tions, both of their syllables and words. Every final 
