Page:Journal Of The Indian Archipelago And Eastern Asia Series.i, Vol.4 (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.107697).pdf/206

 Sin, has, very probably, found its way into our language from th® Malay, China, which is in fact our own word.

Polynesian Words.

(Kangaroo.) it is very remarkable that this word supposed to be Australien, is not to be found as the name of this singular marsupial animal in any language of Australia. Cook and his companions, therefore, when they gave it this name, must have made some mistake, but of what nature cannot he conjectured. I have this on the authority of my friend Captain King, n. n., who has lived so long in Australia, and is so intimately acquainted with the country.

(Taboo.) The word, as written by Archdeacon Williams in his New Zealand Dictionary is Tapu, which he explains by the adjective “ sacred,” and the nouns “ sacred rite,” “ sanctity,” * holi- ness.” The meaning which we give it is to indicate a place under an interdict.

(Tattoo.) The word was first used by Captain Cook as taken from the Polynesian, but no such word is found to exist. The word, which the Archdeacon gives for “to Tattoo” is Ta. In the same work I find the word “Ta” te mean, among other things, “manner ov kind of,” so that the two words combined might mean manner or kind of tattooing. Cook made a few flagrant blunders in his Polynesian Vocabularies, and the wonder is he did not make more.

Although we have thus but 3, or correctly only 2 wordsborrowed from the Polynesian languages, a very different effect has been produced upon the Polynesian languages by our own tongue, In the Abbé Mosblech’s French and Oceanic Dictionary, an unquestton- able authority insuch a mutter, there are not fewer than 100 English words, from the defects of Polynesian pronunciation, of course, greatly mutilated ;—thus for sleep, we have hipa; for ox, hifa ; for wheat, potato; for paper, pepa; for penknife, penikula, A good many of the words point directly at the source, from which they have been derived, as riches, mona; angel, anela ;—scliool, kula ;—ink, inika. The ascertaincd fact of the manner in which Euglish has found its way into the languages of the Society and Sandwich Islands, is chietly valuable in reference to Malayan philology, as indicating the probable manner, iu which Sanskrit, Telinga, Arabic, und Persian have fonud their way into the Malay, and other languages of the Archipelago. They are ouly less corrupted in these, because the recipients are themselves more perfect in structure, than the Polynesian tongues, and because the foreien Eastern languages approach more ucarly the genius of Malayan pronuneiation, than that of our mother tongue to the Polynesian.

Chinese Words.

(Bohea.) From the name of a district of the province of Fokien