Polynesian languages

“ The Polynesian turns David into Raviri, Samuel into Hemara, London into Ranana, and Frederick into Waratariki, and the word steel has been adopted in the Sandwich Islands in the shape of tila. It has been said that a foreigner can never speak another language so perfectly as to conceal all traces of his origin, and though this is going too far, it is quite certain that there are languages the pronunciation of which can never be thoroughly acquired after the age when growth has ended and the organs of speech have ceased to be plastic. ”

“ The languages belong to the Melanesian and Polynesian classes. They are split up into numerous dialects, so widely different that natives of different districts can hardly, if at all, understand each other. It is evident that owing to the seclusion of the villages caused by the general insecurity of former days, and the lack of any literature, the language developed differently in every village.
On some islands things are so bad that one may easily walk in one day through several districts, in each of which is spoken a language quite unintelligible to the neighbours ”

“ N. Adriani has pointed out some words adopted from Malay in Merauke and also some apparent agreements between that language and Indonesian languages generally,43 but there is no evidence of any language from Ceram having passed through the Torres Straits. Agreements between the Merauke and Papuan languages to the east are also pointed out by Dr. Adriani44 but these are no evidence of the passage of a Polynesian fleet, as they are not Polynesian words, and the languages using them have no Polynesian syntax. ”

“ Here we may lump them together not so much as a family as a miscellany. [85] There is one great group of languages in Africa, from a little way north of the equator to its southern extremity, the Bantu, and in addition a complex of other languages across the centre of the continent about which we will not trouble here. [86] There are also two probably separate groups, the Dravidian in South India, and the Malay-Polynesian stretched over Polynesia, and also now including Indian tongues. ”

“ Men of like physical characteristics are found to occupy the greater part of New Guinea, and more or less of the other islands lying westward, as far as the Andaman group, in the Bay of Bengal. They are known by various names, as Negritos, Papuans, Melanesians. Some of their languages have been recently brought by missionary effort to the knowledge of linguistic scholars, and help to prove the race distinct from the Polynesian. In point of material, a wide diversity exists among the dialects of the different tribes ”

“ Two and one-half centuries more elapsed before the memorable voyages and discoveries of Captain Cook disclosed the fact that the new227 ocean world was studded with countless islands, and that most of them were densely inhabited by savages.
Just how or when all these islands became inhabited is not definitely known. Since the Polynesian languages in general are similar, it is conjectured that the inhabitants of the islands have a common origin and that many of the more northerly groups were peopled by emigrants from the south. ”

“ If the Dyaks of Borneo and the Arafuras of Celebes and New Guinea speak a dialect of the Polynesian, it will go far to prove an original people as well as an original language, that is, as original as the Celtic, the Teutonic, the South American ”

“ And again, not only is Polynesian easy to smatter, but interpreters abound. Missionaries, traders, and broken white folk living on the bounty of the natives, are to be found in almost every isle and hamlet; and even where these are unserviceable, the natives themselves have often scraped up a little English, and in the French zone (though far less commonly) a little French-English, or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward “Beach-la-Mar,” comes easy to the Polynesian; it is now taught, besides, in the schools of Hawaii ”

“ Marsden positively states his inability to trace the Polynesian to any other Eastern language; and, at the same time, he has demonstrated, in what he considers a convincing manner, the identity of this language from Madagascar and the islands of the Pacific to the Philippines and Sumatra. ”

“ The true history of a native race can never be written by one who is not thoroughly soaked in the traditions and language of the people, and since no one [Pg 13] man can be an authority upon more than one branch of a people so widely scattered as the Polynesians, a perfect treatise will not be written until Fornanders shall be found contemporary in Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Rarotonga, Futuna, Wallis, and Hawaii, and collaboration arranged between them. To such a task the Polynesian Society in Wellington might well devote its energies. ”

“ The Polynesian is an ancient and primitive member of the Malay family. The New Zealand dialect is the most primitive and entire in its forms. The Hawaiians, Marquesans and Tahitians form a closely related group by themselves. For example, the Marquesan converts are using Hawaiian books and the people of the Austral Islands read the Tahitian Bible. ”

“ If travellers agree upon one point, it is that from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand, from the Tonga Islands to Easter Island, all the Polynesians belong to the same race, and speak the same language with mere variations of dialect. ”

“ That they are of the same race that now inhabit the eastern and southern parts of Polynesia is beyond a doubt. That that race was settled in the Asiatic Archipelago centuries before the Christian era, I believe to be equally certain; but whether the emigration into Polynesia took place before the Christian era, or was occasioned by the invasion of the forefathers of the Malay family from India about the commencement of that era, there is nothing, that I am aware of, either in Polynesian, Malayan or Hindu traditions to throw any light upon. ”

“ The drawer of water, as he lets his bucket down to the farthest reaches of the wells of antiquity, finds in his vessel evidence of kinship with races now covering the whole of Europe. Romance has it that the Amerindians are descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel and Mormon missionaries are carrying that charm among the Polynesians. They are very successful in New Zealand among the Maories. Like a great current of warm water in the sea, the Polynesian races have run from Hawaii to Samoa, the Marquesas, Tahiti, and Maoriland. ”

“ A line drawn athwart the Pacific from New Zealand through Fiji to Hawaii will roughly cut off this domain from the rest of the Oceanic world, where all to the west is Melanesian, Papuan or mixed, while all to the right—Maori, some of the eastern Fijians, Tongans, Samoans, Tahitians, Marquesans, Hawaiians and Easter Islanders—is grouped under the name Polynesian, a type produced by a mixture of Proto-Malayan and Indonesian. ”

“ It is natural, and more conformable to the development of the actual society of savage people, that valor or manhood [227] should assert and assume the preeminence of rank over that of intelligence, and I hence conclude that the Polynesian division was older than the Sanskrit.
How long the Polynesian family remained in the Asiatic Archipelago ere it debouched in the Pacific, there is no means of forming even a conjecture. ”

“ Where they have from early years enjoyed the advantages of a good education, Polynesian youths have proved themselves to possess intellectual powers of no mean order. They are almost invariably fluent speakers ”

“ Pottery was not manufactured by the Polynesians: a fact which, it has been argued, goes far to prove the remoteness of the Polynesian migration from the Malay Archipelago, where there is not a single tribe which does not possess the art. It may, however, be that, moving among small coral islands for scores of generations and thus without materials, they lost the art. ”

“ While probably of the same ethnic origin, the race which inhabits the Hawaiian, Marquesan, Society, Tonga, Friendly, Samoan, and other groups of the eastern division of the South Seas—the pure Polynesian—is as different, mentally [297] and physically, from the Melanesian or Papuan type of the New Hebrides, Solomons, New Britains and New Guinea as the Mongolian is from the Ethiopian. Each race seems to reflect the physical environment in which it has been cradled. ”

“ The author says, "The language spoken on most of the islands of the South Sea, and therefore called the Polynesian, may be considered either as primitive, or as related to, and descended from, a common source with the Malay." It is undoubtedly very old, for these people have been from an unknown period separated from all others, and before the arrival of Europeans among them, considered themselves as the whole human race. ”

“ A close comparative study of the tales from each group should reveal local characteristics, but for our purpose the Polynesian race is one, and its common stock of tradition, which at the dispersal and during the subsequent periods of migration was carried as common treasure-trove of the imagination as far as New Zealand on the south and Hawaii on the north, and from the western Fiji to the Marquesas on the east, repeats the same adventures among similar surroundings and colored by the same interests and desires. ”

“ The island-nature of the archipelago is very favourable to race-mixture; and as we know that on some islands there were several settlements of Polynesians, it is not surprising to find a very complex mingling of races, which it is not an easy task to disentangle. It would seem, however, that we have before us remnants of four races: a short, dark, curly-haired and perhaps original race, a few varieties of the tall Melanesian race, arrived in the islands in several migrations, an old Polynesian element as a relic of its former migrations eastward, and a present Polynesian element from the east. ”

“ The Polynesian people are supposed to be descended in mixed line from the Spanish and original Tahitians. It is certain that they have a strain of white blood in their makeup, for they have none of the negroid characteristics found farther west. ”

“ This length of time permits the best adjustment of their several traditions, and is not so long as to render it difficult to explain the similarity of their dialects and usages.168 237
The disposition of the Polynesian is an improvement on that of the Malay. He is more to be trusted, and is more affable. In culture he is backward. Pottery is scarcely known, agriculture is not carried on, cannibalism was nigh universal, polygamy was prevalent, and the relation of the sexes was exceedingly loose, especially among the unmarried. ”

“ In the same manner the ng is a consonant sound in the Daya, Bugui and Batta dialects. It is the same in the Samoan; and although still retained in the Tonga, Hervey and New Zealand groups, it is but sparsely used and decreasing in frequency in the Tahiti, Paumotu and Marquesan groups, and disused entirely in the Hawaiian group; p and k being its general substitutes. [226]
Other indications of the relationship of the Polynesian and Aryan races are not wanting to those who are more competent than I am to pursue the comparison. ”

“ It is clear that a Malayo-Polynesian culture, proved by the combined evidence of language, mythology, arts, and customs, has spread itself over a great part of the Southern Islands, from the Philippines down to New Zealand, and from Easter Island to Madagascar, though the pure Malayo-Polynesian race only forms a part of the population of the district in which its language and civilization more or less predominate. ”

“ In spite of their diffusion over a multitude of islands separated from each other by hundreds and even thousands of miles of ocean, the Polynesians are on the whole a remarkably homogeneous race in physical type, language, and forms of society and religion. ”

“ The universal belief in the passing of the spirits of the dead to the west, is to my mind a complete answer to those who hold that the Polynesian migrations were from the east. It is an essential part of Polynesian belief that the spirits rejoin those of the ancient dead and there dwell in a land of beauty and plenty, where the gods supply every want, and with whom communication is constant. The Polynesians would not locate this Paradise in the west, if their ancestral home was in the east. ”

“ This superposition of a Polynesian admixture upon a barbarous negroid stock may account for the anomalous character of the Fijians, for in the arts they equalled or in some things excelled the other island peoples of the Pacific, and some of their customs approached closely to the cultural level of the Polynesians, but in certain fundamental things they remained the most fiendish savages upon earth. Indeed we should expect that contact with a somewhat high culture would introduce new wants, and thus affect their arts more profoundly than their customs. ”

“ In the traditions which the Polynesians have preserved of their migrations in past times, it is likely that some historic truth may be preserved, and with their help, aided by a closer study of the languages and myths of the district, it may be some day possible for ethnologists to sketch out, at least roughly, the history of the race for ages before the European discovery. ”

“ During all these migrations the Take, or Marquesan people represent themselves as coming from below (mei-iao) and going up (una) . Throughout the Polynesian groups, however, within the tropics, when a land is spoken of as iao, ilalo, iraro of the speaker’s place, it invariably means to the leeward, before the prevailing trade-wind. This being from northeast or southeast, these migrations pursued a course from west to east, and thus corroborate the Polynesian descent from Asia or the Asiatic Archipelago. ”