THROUGH HAWAII. 
35 
too transient to allow them, however well qualified they 
may have been, to become acquainted with the nice 
distinction of vowel sounds, and peculiar structure, of 
the aboriginal languages of the islands ; and those indi¬ 
viduals whom purposes of commerce have induced to 
remain a longer period among them, whatever facility 
they may have acquired in speaking it, have not 
attended to its orthographical construction, but have 
adopted that method of spelling names of persons and 
places which happen to have been used by those of 
their predecessors, with whose printed accounts they 
were most familiar. 
The want of a standard orthography cannot be better 
illustrated, than by noticing the great variety of methods 
adopted by different voyagers to represent the same 
word. We have seen the name of Tamehameha, the 
late king, spelt in various publications twelve or four¬ 
teen different ways ; and the same variety has also pre¬ 
vailed in other popular names, though perhaps not to an 
equal extent. The above word is a reduplication of the 
simple word meha , (lonely, or solitary,) with the definite 
article Ta prefixed, which is a part of the name ; though 
rejected in Cook’s Voyages, where he is called Maiha- 
maiha. Captain Vancouver calls him Tamaahmaah, 
which is somewhat nearer. 
This disagreement in different writers arises, in the 
first place, from the deficiency in the vowel characters 
as used in the English language, for expressing the 
native vowel sounds. The English language has but 
one sign, or letter, for the vowel sound in the first syl¬ 
lable of father and fable, or the words tart and tale ; 
but in Hawaiian the sense of these sounds, which fre¬ 
quently occur unconnected with any other, is so differ- 
