Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/11

 information contained in Part I. of this volume is the result of the patient and intelligent research of the Rev. Thomas Williams, of Adelaide, during his thirteen years' residence as a Wesleyan Missionary in Fiji. Some additions have been made of facts which have transpired since Mr. Williams gathered and arranged the fruit of his own personal observations and inquiries. As to the spelling and pronunciation of Fijian words, some few remarks are necessary. The general practice has hitherto been to represent—often very imperfectly—the sounds of the Fijian by English vowels. Captain Cook used this method with all Polynesian words; but, in his time, the Oceanic languages had not been reduced to a written form. Now that this has been effected in many instances, the practice just named must necessarily lead to misconception and confusion. The Missionaries who have given to these languages a fixed orthography, have wisely adopted the Roman alphabet, and a system of vowels having the Italian power, which met the requirements of the case far better than the almost exceptional sounds of the English vowels.

As regards the consonants, the Missionaries found that the Fijian did not require all the characters used by ourselves: some of these were therefore rejected, while some were employed where we have recourse to a clumsy combination. Thus, for instance, they have taken the unnecessary C to express the soft dental Th.

There are no sounds in the Fijian peculiar to itself; but it has characteristic compound consonants. These are Mb, Md, Ng