Page:Rambles in New Zealand.djvu/34

 Honee); James, "Hemi;" &c. Wilson is changed to "Widdyhinna;" Stack, "Tacca;" Chapman, Tappimanna, with a suppression of at the beginning, or not quite t'Happimanna. The nearest approach to be found for my name was "Biddywiddi' or "Piddiwiddi." Those gentlemen whose names I have made use of will, no doubt, excuse me, as I was at a loss for other illustrations. Very few except missionaries are called by their surnames, all the others being Honis, Hemis, Widdims (Williams), &c. The framer of the alphabet was, I understand, thus sparing of his letters, in order to make the language as simple as possible, without taking into account the difficulties of expressing with them those modulations of sound on which the richness and melody of a language so much depend. They have but five vowels,  (ah),  (a),  (e),, and  (pronounced ou). , as in "Waikato" (Wykato), could have been conveniently superseded by  as a vowel, though the natives cannot make the consonantal sound of that letter. In like manner, there is no character to signify the as in Edward or West; and yet that is a pure vowel sound, and is constantly to be found in the language. It appears to me that had the object been to make the language as simple as possible, that object would have been much better effected by augmenting rather than diminishing the number of vowels which characterise the English and other European tongues: for instance, had there been, and , with a separate character, as in "we," and another as in "west;" , and ; it would have been comparatively easy for any foreigner to learn the pronunciation of the language from the books, whereas at present it is as impossible as in any old mother language. For instance, who could know how to pronounce "hau," which is pronounced exactly as "how" in English? Whereas "waw" is pronounced just as the same letters would be in English. But it is useless to multiply instances which evidently must be innumerable. The