LINGUISTICS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC. 169 
THE QUESTION OF STANDARD LANGUAGES. 
In Melanesia every island has its own distinct speech. ‘These can 
all be shown by the grammarian to be kindred and allied, but for all 
practical purposes they are separate and distinct. A Mota man going 
to Motalava, 8 miles away, unless he had some previous knowledge of 
the language, would find himself unable to understand the speech of 
the people there. Many words, doubtless, would be the same, but the 
intonation is entirely different, the consonants and vowels are strangely 
at variance, and the Motalava words are clipped and chopped about 
almost beyond recognition. With more frequent communication 
bilingualism is getting more common, but it is a curious thing that 
when natives from various islands or places meet communication is 
held by each person or group of persons speaking in his or in their own 
tongue. ‘Thus, a party from Malaita landing on Ulawa will speak Sa‘a 
or Lau or Tolo and will be answered in Ulawan, and the general drift 
of the conversation seems to be understood quite readily. In a large 
measure this is doubtless due to that quickness of understanding 
which is characteristic of the Melanesian peoples generally. 
Whereas smaller differences of dialect exist on every island, an 
island of quite moderate size, like Santa Maria, in the Banks Group, 
has two separate languages which vary considerably and which cause 
the two peoples practically to be unintelligible to one another. ‘This 
sort of thing is multiplied several times over in a large island like 
Malaita. The language at the south end of Malaita is the same as 
that spoken at the village of Sa‘a; in the Mara Masiki Channel, which 
divides Malaita in two, the language is that known at Sa‘a as Tolo, and 
to this belongs the language spoken at Oroha near Sa‘a, the sketch 
of which made by Bishop Patteson appears in Von der Gabelentz’s 
““Melanesischen Sprachen.” ‘The language round the coast at the 
north end is known as Lau, and a knowledge of Lau will carry one 
from Sinerago, Diamond Harbor, on the northeast coast, to Langa- 
langa, Alite Harbor, on the northwest coast. In the interior, at the 
north end, the people speak a language much like Lau but having 
distinct peculiarities. Along the coast there will be found variations 
of these three main types, such variations amounting almost to sep- 
arate languages. Sa‘a shows marked affinities to the Wango and 
Heuru languages in San Cristoval, whereas Lau has many points of 
similarity to the language of Florida, and the inland speech of the 
north end has likenesses to the language of Bugotu. All of the three 
main languages of Malaita have very decided resemblances to one 
another and all are certainly of a common stock, so that Sa‘a, ¢. g., 
is more like Tolo than it is like Wango or Heuru. 
Up to the present time the missionaries in the Melanesian Mission 
and in the Anglican Mission in New Guinea have been allowed to 
prepare translations of the Bible and prayer book, etc., in whatever 
