Page:A dictionary of the language of Mota.djvu/7



The language of Mota is spoken as their native tongue by some eight hundred people, and has never probably been, spoken in a past generation by more than a thousand. It derives its only importance from its having become, by circumstances rather than by choice, the language used as a common medium of communication in the Melanesian Mission. Being used in translations, in the oral teaching given to natives of many widely distant islands, and in the inter-communication of those so taught which has now continued for thirty years, it has become, next to the language of Fiji, the most generally known of the Melanesian tongues. It has certainly merits of its own; it is phonologically free from the difficulties which beset some of the languages of the same and of neighbouring groups; and it is full, precise and flexible enough for use in teaching and in translations. A Mota Dictionary may be taken as exhibiting a specimen of the group of languages to which it belongs and should be followed by Dictionaries or ample Vocabularies of the languages of the principal islands in which the Melanesian Mission is at work.

Mota, Sugarloaf I., is one of the Banks' Group, which lies to the north of the New Hebrides. The Mota language is closely connected with the other languages and dialects of the Banks' Islands, and of the northernmost islands of the New Hebrides. These belong to a well-defined group of Melanesian languages; and these again are members of the great family of Oceanic Languages spoken throughout the island world, which stretches from the coasts of Africa and Asia to the most Eastern groups of Polynesia. In this wide expanse Madagascar and Formosa are included, but Australia and, in the main, New Guinea are left out.