Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/232

 202 FIJI AND THE FIJIANS. arate elements in each being distinctly uttered. The consonantal part of the language excludes the sounds of the English aspirate, the ch of " chink," " churl," and the like, the soft g or j* the th as heard in " this tie," " thought," and " truth," and the composites x and z. The letter c is used to represent the sound of th in " though," " that," which is of constant occurrence in Fijian ; g answers to the ng in " ring," " swing," etc. ; h is occasionally read as g in " guest ; " thus Rakiraki, mentioned above, is pronounced Ragiragi ; and q answers either to the English nh in " banker," or, which is much more commonly the case, to the ng in such words as " linger " and " mangle." The sounds of d and 6, even though standing, where they continually stand, at the beginning of a word, are never enunciated without a nasal before them, n being heard before d, m before h. Thus Doi, one of the islands, is pronounced Ndoi, and Bau, Mbau. P is only used in the Mbau dialect in foreign words, or in such as have been introduced from other dialects. F too is an exotic. Eijian stands almost alone among its fellows in possess- ing the sound of s. It is doubtful whether any Polynesian people em- ploy this sound, with the exception of the Samoans and the Fijians ; and it is much more frequent in the tongue of the latter than in that of the former. The general law of the Polynesian syllable, as already laid down, is strictly observed in the Eijian language, subject only to the qualifications, which the invariable use of the nasal before d and A, and the occurrence of the sounds represented by q, may be thought to require ; together with the further fact, that r is not uncommonly em- ployed after c?, as in dra, " blood," drodro^ " a current." Fijian, like the Maori and others of the Polynesian languages, is rich in articles ; ho or o, and Tcoi or oi, answering under fixed rules to the English " the ; " and a or a^, na or nai, being used, both before singular and non-singular nouns, when the meaning is indefinite. The noun is either primitive or derived. Very many words are employed, at the will of the speaker, either as nouns or verbs. Many nouns expressing habit, character, mode of life, and the like, are formed by prefixing a frequentative particle daio to a verbal term. For ex- ample, from vosa, " to talk," comes dauvosa, " one who talks incessant- ly," " a chatter-box." Diminutives are made by reduplication ; thus vale is a " house," valevale, a " little house," a " canoe house ; " and so vesivesi is a " little spear," from vesi, a " spear." name Fiji, which is the designation of the group to windward. The presence of these sounds in this dialect may perhaps bo traced to the fact, that Lakemba is the chief island of the group nearest to Tonga, and the one which has always had the most intercourse with the Tongans. The i^ sound in the name Fiji is to bo accounted for in the same way.
 * The last two, however, are both found in the Lakemba dialect, as, for instance, the j in tho