Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/231

 LAJS'GTJAGE AND LITEKATIJEE. 201 and me go," shutting out the third party, or, " Let us all three go to- gether." No such ambiguity can attach to the words in the mouth of a Polynesian. In the former case, a Tongan, for example, would say ke ta 0, in the latter ke tau o ; and other languages of the Oceanic class make a similar distinction. In regard to their syntax, the Malay o-Poly- nesian tongues have little of the width, the elaborateness, or the sym- metry of the group of languages to which the English belongs. At the same time they are equally removed from the chaotic, cramped, and ill-proportioned style of the Tartar, the Chinese, and other leading tongues of Central and Eastern Asia. The expression of thought in Malay o-Polynesian is simple, inartificial, flowing, and vigorous ; and, as a vehicle of Christian truth, whether by word of mouth or by writing, the languages of this family will admit of comparison with the capabil- ities of much more polished tongues. The characters, which have now been enumerated as belonging to Malay o-Polynesian speech at large, are all shared by the Fijian, of which a more minute account will be acceptable to the students of lan- guage, and may not be without its interest for the general reader. It will be necessary to premise, that Fijian is not a single language, like that of the Friendly Islands, but is spoken in as many as fifteen, proba- bly in more than fifteen, dialects. The distinction between some of these dialects is slight. Others of them are as unlike one another as the European, Spanish and Portuguese, or as the Bengali and Mahratta of Northern India. Not seldom their vocabularies are quite dissimilar, the same ideas being represented by terms differing in root as well as in form ; and, in certain cases, one or more of the elementary sounds of the language are wanting ; or, on the other hand, sounds obtain, which the bulk of the dialects do not acknowledge. The sound of the English j, for instance, is heard at Lakemba and in some of the neigh- bouring islands ; while the Somosomo dialect has no k, and that of Ea- kiraki and other parts excludes t. The Missionaries are acquainted, more or less, with about seven dialects, and books have been printed in four of them, namely, in those of Mbau, Eewa, Somosomo, and La- kemba. Mbau, however, is at once the Athens and the Rome of Fiji ; and it is the language as spoken there, into which the Scriptures have been translated, and of which the following statements are mostly de- signed to be illustrative. The simple vowel sounds, both long and short, which are found in the Italian and other European tongues, are those which obtain iu Fijian, though with a less open expression in the case of one or two of them. The compound vowels are a^, au, ei, eu, oi, ou, and iu, the sep-