Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/554

 dS6 APPENDIX. No. II. ."sittTcH Oy THE ORTHOtiEAPHY MADE USE OF TO EX- PKESS OHIENTAL WORDS. The following short explanation of the orthography used in the course of the work will be sufficient to make it intelligible. Of v'ords which have become familiar to the Euro- pean reader by long use, I have taken care not to dis- turb the popular orthography. But on occasions of philological discussion, or wherever a more critical at- tention was required, I have attended to a more pre- cise and systematic one. The sounds of the Polyne- sian languages are few and simple, such as can be arti- culated by the European organs, and expressed by the Roman characters, witliuui much difficulty. The vowels ai'e as follows: a is our a in call, e our e in melodram ; i is the Italian ?, or our ce ; o is our o m sober ; zi is our 00, or our u mj'ull. The a with a circumflex, thus, a, is our short tc in sum. The diphthongs are but two in number, which are the combinations expressed by ai and ao, according to the description just given of these vowels. The consonants require very little description ; they are h, d, f, g, h, j, k, I, m, n, p, r, s, f, w, y, and z. In common with most of other oriental lan- guages, the Polynesian dialects have four distinct charac- ters, for which the Bx)man alphabet has no correspond- ing symbols. These express our ch in church, our nasal iig in sing ; the sound which, in a rapid enunciation, is nearly expressed by the consonants ny ; and lastly, the aspirate. These are respectively expressed, in this work, by ch, ??o", ny, and h. 12