THE ART OF BREAKING ENGLISH. 15 
Note has been made of the fact that the superior partner, in 
making his contribution to the capital stock of the jargon, has mani- 
fested the utmost readiness to degrade and to debase the currency 
of his English speech. We are to observe this in far greater detail in 
the subjoined vocabulary and in the consideration of the syntax of 
Beach-la-mar. Similarly we shall find it of interest to observe what 
is the attitude of the junior, and ostensibly inferior, partner toward 
the material which is communicated to him, and more particularly 
toward that which he contributes from his own store. 
I do not know a single language of the Pacific in which it is possible 
to be ungrammatical; there is certainly not one in which certain 
persons are understood to speak with due regard for syntax and 
certain others betray their lack of education by speaking incorrectly. 
That is a distinction that marks only the races of higher culture; the 
lower race is of even and complete education. 
This comment has reference properly only to matters of grammar. 
In purity and beauty of diction there may exist marked distinctions. 
I have listened with rich delight to the classic Samoan which Malietoa 
Laupepa, the last king of that realm, could employ with singular 
grace when sure of the comprehension of his auditors; yet to many 
Samoans his words would prove incomprehensible. Percy Smith, 
the president of the Polynesian Society, has collected the words of 
many of the karakia or mystic formulas of Maori might which can 
never now be more than words, for no man alive can communicate 
their inner sense. In my own collection of Samoan legend and 
poetry are many passages for which no explanation can be given; the 
ancient sages have taken the knowledge with them along the road 
of the soul to Pulotu whence is no return. 
The exactness and uniformity of the grammar of the island tongues 
call for such explanation as we may offer. I have said that it is quite 
impossible to be ungrammatical. The isolating languages have no 
such device as inflection to indicate grammatical relation. Accuracy 
in speech rests on accuracy in the positioning of the different words 
and precision in the employment of the demonstrative and para- 
deictic accessories which indicate, by the former the relations of 
person and time and place and slightly of manner, by the latter the 
concords and dependencies which exist between the attributive words. 
In employing these several classes of words one puts the vocables in 
the correct order, sense is made, comprehensibility results, and one is 
understood. But put word to word in the incorrect order, the result 
is nonsense, one is not understood at all. In this sense it is really 
impossible to be ungrammatical. 
Widely variant as they are in vocabulary, the languages of the 
Western Pacific, in which the jargon was brought into being, are all 
of the isolating type; their grammar, though to us it may seem most 
