The native peoples of the western Pacific (excluding the Australian aboriginals) are classified ethnologically in four divisions: Polynesian, Micronesian, Melanesian, Papuan. The languages of the first two divisions may be regarded practically as one and may be called, roughly, Polynesian. In Melanesia there are certain communities who do not speak Melanesian and whose language is reported to be allied closely to the language of Tonga, and who in consequence belong to the Polynesian division of speech. With the exception of these communities, all the other peoples in Melanesia use one type of speech. In Papua, at any rate on the south and north coasts, two completely different types of language exist--the one closely allied to Melanesian, the other separate and distinct but slightly akin, if at all, to the languages even of the peoples in the neighboring islands of Torres Straits. This latter type Mr. S. H. Ray has named Papuan.
In Polynesia proper there is but one type of language, and the Polynesian peoples inhabit the following groups of islands: Hawaii, Marquesas, Tahiti, Paumotu, Mangareva, Niu_, Samoa, Rarotonga, Tonga, New Zealand (Maori), Futuna and Uvea (Horn and Wallis Island), Tokelau (Ellice Group). In Melanesia, Polynesian-speaking peoples are found at Mele and Fila in Sandwich Island and on Fotuna and Aniwa in the southern New Hebrides; on Uea in the Loyalties; on Tikopia and Anuda; on Matema, Pileni, and Nukapu in the Reef Islands off Santa Cruz, on Rennell and Bellona south of San Cristoval; on Sikaiana north of Ulawa; on the coral atoll Ongtong Java north of Ysabel, and on Nukuoro in the Carolines.
Mr. Ray reckons the number of separate forms of Polynesian speech as 19 or 20. With the Polynesians each group or each separate island has practically only one language, and the languages of all the Polynesian peoples (with the exception of those in Melanesia) have been reduced to writing and grammars and dictionaries of them have been published. The Presbyterian missionaries in the New Hebrides have made certain studies of the four Polynesian languages in their sphere, but no linguistic work has been done on the other Polynesian languages in Melanesia and there is no way of knowing what peculiar characteristics they present, if any.
It would be of considerable interest linguistically to know whether, in the case of the languages of Matema, Pileni, and Nukapu, the influence of the neighboring Melanesian peoples has in any way altered the characteristic features of speech, and whether there is any sign of a mingling of Melanesian peculiarities of speech with the radical characteristics of the Polynesian stock--any cross, so to speak, such as was effected in English by the introduction, e. g., of the romance prefixes and suffixes.
[158] However, since the Melanesian language in the neighboring island of Nifilole shows no sign of Polynesian influence at work, and since the tendency is always for the later and the more decayed types of speech to affect adversely the older and more complicated types, it can hardly be expected that the Polynesian languages in Melanesia shall have been affected by the Polynesian.
Certain Papuan languages in New Guinea show very distinct signs of such a cross. Thus, Mr. Ray writes of Maisin (Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. III) that it appears to be a Papuan language which has adopted an abnormal number of Melanesian words. "It has also adopted some Melanesian particles, the verbal auxiliaries entirely, and the use of possessives with post-positions; but in other respects its grammar is Papuan." The language of Mailu on the south coast is in the same mixed condition as regards its vocabulary. Maisin may represent a survival of a former Papuan population in Eastern Papua.
Micronesia has six groups of islands, Carolines, Ebon-Marshall, Gilberts, Nauru, Pelau, Tobi, and with the single exception of the Carolines each group has only one language. Mr. Ray states that in the Carolines there are at least five distinct languages, Ponape, Kusaie, Mortlock and Ruk, Yap, and Uluthi. In certain parts of Micronesia a jargon called Chamorro is spoken, presumably a mixture of Spanish and Micronesian.
While reckoning the approximate number of Polynesian languages as 19 and of Micronesian as 15, Mr. Ray says that Melanesia has 180 and New Guinea (Papua) certainly 150, with many others still unnamed. He states also that in many of the Papuan or non-Melanesian languages of New Guinea "the extraordinary difficulty of the grammar and the limited area in which the language is spoken make it extremely impossible that any one will ever take the trouble to learn one." As an example of a difficult language Mr. Ray quotes the Kiwai of the Fly River, the grammar of which he says is "awful," thus, e. g., supposing that three people share a coconut between them and one of them says "we three are eating a coconut," nimo-ibi nao oi n-oruso-ibi-duru-mo; the literal translation of this is "we three one coconut we-eat-three-now-we." If a man eats three coconuts he says mo netowa naobi oi potoro n-iriso-ibi, i. e., "I two one coconut three I-eat-three."
As to the New Guinea languages, it is enough for our present purpose to state that they seem to be of two types, viz. Melanesian and Papuan, i. e., non-Melanesian. The Anglican Mission in New Guinea has to deal with both types of these languages. The language used at Wedau, the headquarters of the Mission, is of the usual Melanesian type, and Mr. Copland King, the original investigator of Wedauan, has also published a translation of the Gospel according to St. Luke in [158/159] Binandere, an extremely difficult non-Melanesian language spoken on the Mamba River. Mr. King has stated recently that on the coast of German New Guinea both Melanesian and non-Melanesian languages occur. Both types also occur in the sphere of the London Missionary Society.
Melanesian languages are spoken in Fiji, Rotum_, the Loyalties, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Banks, Torres, Santa Cruz, Swallow Group, Solomons, New Britain and New Ireland, Admiralties, in the islands lying off New Guinea to the eastward, and in New Guinea itself. With the single exception of Savo in the Solomons, all of the Melanesian languages are practically of the same type and the grammars of all of them may be made up on the same framework. Santa Cruz contains the greatest number of exceptions to the regular type and is confessedly the most difficult of the Melanesian languages. Savo is regarded by Dr. Codrington as Melanesian, but of a more archaic type than the rest, as is shown by the absence of prepositions in it and by its failure to distinguish between parts of speech and also by its use of demonstratives as both pronouns and adverbs.
PROMINENT LINGUISTIC PECULIARITIES. It will be of use to summarize here the most prominent linguistic peculiarities common both to Melanesian and Polynesian languages and to add further some special marks whereby the differences between these two types of the Oceanic languages may be readily recognized.
1. POSSESSIVES. Possession is shown in the Melanesian languages by suffixing pronominal form in ku, mu, na, to the noun: Mota qatuk, my head; Sa'a nimemu, thy hand; Florida tinana, his mother; and also to radicals no (na), mo, thus forming an expression to my, thy, his, in English, while another pair of radicals ga, ma, with the pronouns suffixed, represent, respectively, a thing belonging more closely to a person, and a thing for a person to drink.
In Melanesia these pronominal forms are suffixed only to nouns of a certain class; those, namely, which signify parts of the body and degrees of relation or a man's belongings. In Malay these pronouns are suffixed to nouns without any distinction of class, while in Maori they appear added to the vowels o and a or to these vowels supplemented by n or m: no, na, mo, ma, and are used preceding the noun. In Maori the differences in meanings of these possessives are shown by the changes between a and o, a signifying that the thing referred to is regarded as acted upon by the person with whom it is in relation, o that the action is from the thing on the person. "What the Polynesians do by the changes of a and o the Melanesians do by the use of four distinct words, and in these it is the consonant and not the vowel which [159/160] gives the particular difference in signification. But both Polynesian and Melanesian have a stem, a noun, to which identical pronouns are suffixed to give a possessive sense." (Mel. Lang., p. 133.)
2. PRONOUNS. All the Oceanic languages have inclusive and exclusive forms in the first person plural of the personal pronoun; in one case the person or persons addressed are included with the speaker, in the other they are excluded. Polynesian languages have no trinal number apart from the plural; indeed, the Polynesian plural is practically composed of a plural to which the numeral tolu, three, has been added, and the so-called trinals in Melanesia have the same explanation. All Polynesian and Melanesian languages use a dual.
3. VERBS. Verbal particles are used in all the families of Oceanic languages. It is by means of these particles (which precede the verb) that a word expresses itself as a verb and also that the verb exercises its power of expressing tense and mood. Madagascar, Polynesia, and Melanesia all show the presence of these verbal particles in their languages.
(a) In Melanesia the pronoun when used as object is suffixed to the verb, certain shortened forms of the pronoun being used; and in some languages in the Solomons the regular object is preceded by an anticipatory object consisting of this suffixed pronoun in the third person. Thus in Sa'a, I paddle a canoe, noko hotela 'inie 'iola, i. e., I paddle it canoe. With this may be compared the "pidgin" English use "How many boy you catch 'im?"--where 'im seems reminiscent of the native idiom.
(b) The Melanesian languages freely add consonantal and syllabic suffixes to verbs in order to make them transitive or to give them a more definitively transitive force. These verbal suffixes can be found present in all the Oceanic languages with the possible exception of Malagasy. Their use is seen in fullest force in Melanesia. Many words in the Polynesian and Micronesian dictionaries show their presence, but Samoan is the only Polynesian language which uses them with anything like the fullness and freedom that obtains in Melanesia.
(c) In all the Oceanic families of language a causative is used when a verb comes to signify the making to do or be. In Melanesia the causative prefix is va, pa, fa, either alone or with a second syllable ka, ga. In Polynesia the causative is whaka, faka, and this is plainly the same as the Melanesian forms. Identically the same forms appear in Malagasy, but Malay does not possess them.
(d) Reciprocity of relationship or of action is marked in the Melanesian languages by a prefix to the verb. This prefix has two forms, var, and ha'a (vag) or fe (ve), and the latter from appears in Samoan, but nowhere else in Polynesia.
[161] (e) The adjectival prefixes showing condition ma, ta, are almost universal in Melanesia, and the dictionaries show them as appearing also in Fiji, in Polynesia, in Malagasy, and in the languages of the Malay Archipelago, though the grammars of the various languages do not recognize them.
4. NOUNS. In the Oceanic languages generally, Malagasy, Malay, Melanesian, Polynesian, there is a common practice of forming nouns by the addition of certain suffixes: nga, na, an, ana; ha, la, a; and in Melanesia nouns are formed also by prefixing i to the verb; Fiji sele to cut, isele a knofe. Sa's dämu to eat areca nut, idemu a lime spatula. The only noun suffix regularly employed in Polynesia is nga, but several of the Polynesian languages show examples of verbal nouns formed by adding a or fa or la to the verb. Melanesian regularly employs all the noun suffixes stated above.
5. ADJECTIVES. Melanesia also makes an extensive use of adjectival suffixes; these are added both to nouns and verbs. The forms are ga, g, a, ra, la, la'a, li, ta, na, ina. Malagasy has forms in na, ana, ina, but Malay shows no sign of them, nor does the Maori of Polynesia. Tongan and Samoan both show the use of a as an adjectival suffix and odd instances occur in Polynesia of the use of na, and Maori has a few instances of a thus used.
6. GENITIVE. The Melanesian languages employ a genitive preposition to convey the idea of possession when two nouns are in apposition, e. g., Ulawa 'apa ni menu wing of a bird, or else they suffix the pronoun in the third person to the first noun; Ulawa 'apa' apana manu its wing bird, i. e., bird's wing.
The common genitive used throughout Melanesia is ni; in certain parts of Melanesia ni changes to li and si appears there also as a genitive. In Melanesia the juxtaposition of two nouns also conveys a genitive force: Sa'a nime hau house (of) stone, and in certain languages a genitive relation is conveyed by modification of the final vowel when two nouns are in juxtaposition: Mota ima house, ime vui house of the spirit. In Lau, Malaita, Solomons, an e is added to the first of two such nouns giving a genitive force: tolo hill, toloe fera heights of the land. In the Polynesian languages genitive relation is expressed by nouns in apposition or by the use of the possessive as above (1), and there is no special genitive preposition.
The Polynesian languages on their side have a large and varied use of prepositions and there is much nicety in the use of them; this is partly owing to the distinction in the sense of a and o already mentioned, a being used as active and o as passive.
[162] 7. PASSIVE FORMS. In Melanesia no passives are found, whereas all the Polynesian languages have regular passive endings to their verbs. In a pamphlet entitled "Certain suffixes in Oceanic languages" the present writer has shown that these passive suffixes are composed of adjectival suffixes (na, ina, a) added to transitive suffixes.
CERTAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FORMS OF SPEECH. From the following note, supplied by Mr. Ray, it will be seen how great is the difference between the Polynesian and the Melanesian forms of speech and the Papuan or non-Melanesian of New Guinea. In the Papuan languages: Nouns and pronouns are defined by means of suffixed particles, e.g., "my hand" is not "hand my," as in Melanesia, but "me of hand"; "bird's wing" is not "wing of bird" or "bird its wing," as in the Melanesian examples above, but "bird of wing."
Similarly, nouns have various case suffixes instead of prepositions: house-to, house-of, house-at, house-from.
Adjectives usually precede the noun.
Tenses of the verb are expressed by means of suffixes, not as in Melanesia or Polynesia by a variation in a preceding particle.
Number and person in the verb are expressed by: (a) a prefix, (b) a change in the suffix, or (c) shown only by the pronoun.
Number and person of the subject or object are indicated sometimes by a compound prefix.
METHOD OF LEARNING A MELANESIAN LANGUAGE. To learn Mota is easy enough, since both a dictionary and a grammar have been compiled by Dr. Codrington. Ulawa and Sa'a are the only other languages in the sphere of the Melanesian Mission which have full grammars, and probably they are thus the easiest to learn after Mota, since good material exits for study in the shape of translations, etc. In learning any of these three languages, which may be regarded as typical Melanesian languages, the special points to be studied are:
PRONOUNS. The personal pronouns should be written out and learned by heart; the inclusive and exclusive forms should be carefully noted in the first person plural. It is quite easy to make a blunder over these forms and to say, e. g., inina in Mota for ikamam, and the story is told of a certain missionary who on describing his experiences in England to a class at Norfolk Island kept on saying inina when he meant either ikamam or possibly ikara, i. e., presumably, his wife and himself. His hearers protested sotto voce, inina tagai amaia "we were not with him." The suffixed pronouns and their uses must be carefully studied.
[163] THE VERB. Under this heading come verbal and negative particles, transitive suffixes, the native view of time, etc.
PREPOSITIONS. A list of these should be made in Mota according to whether they can be followed or not by the demonstrative na before the noun.
GENERAL DIRECTIONS. Many missionaries have to learn new Melanesian tongues and have to commit them to writing for the first time. It is always important to remember that practically one grammatical framework will serve for all the Melanesian languages; the style of the languages is the same throughout.
One system of orthography will avail throughout and special provision can be made for rare or exceptional sounds. Generally it will be found that the sounds in the Melanesian languages are not very different from the sounds in the well-known European languages, and in representing them it will be sufficient to take the ordinary sounds of the English alphabet and by the additional use of italic letters make provision for nasal or guttural variations of well-known sounds. Modifications of the vowels can be shown by the use of the diæresis. The points noted above are the main points to be kept in view in the endeavor to acquire any new Melanesian language.
As will be noticed further on, familiarity with Mota was a decided help in linguistic study in Melanesia, but a man would be very apt to be led astray if he made Mota a rigid standard.
Too much stress can not possibly be laid on the value of learning lists of words by heart: "Let each object bring some native sound ringing in your ears, so that the sound brings the object before your eyes. Do not be content to speak as a European. The real and most stringent test of the knowledge of a language is whether you can understand the natives speaking among themselves. To know thoroughly by book is a different thing from knowing by ear. I believe we must learn like children, through the ear, not by books much." (Pilkington, of Uganda.)
TRANSLATION OF SCRIPTURE. The use of Melanesian languages by a missionary is confessedly only the preliminary to his using them as a vehicle for conveying the divine message of salvation. To the mind of the missionary the end and object of a native language, the very reason for its existence, is that it should be used for the worship of God and for the dissemination of religious ideas among the people who use it, and to the mind of the churchman a language has attained to the height of its glory when it [163/164] has been used as a medium for the performance of the highest act of worship, the celebration of the holy mysteries.
It may be predicated of all Melanesian languages that they are in themselves fit and proper instruments for use in God's work. The researches of scholars go to show that all languages are marvels of perfection, and the so-called jargons of savages are in their degree as perfect a creation as the language of the most highly civilized people. To question whether the Gospels can be translated, e. g., into one of the languages of Malaita because of the alleged absence from it of certain words and ideas which are the equivalent of or which correspond to certain words and ideas in the original Greek is, among other things, to forget the history of our own language. One has only to look at Coverdale's Bible, to say nothing of the Douai Bible, to see the immense number of foreign words expressive of religious ideas that have been imported bodily into English from the classical languages. In some cases it may be that the idea required did not exist in English; in other cases, though the idea and word might be present, yet the foreign word prevailed, e. g., conscience, where the English equivalent inwit survived until quite recently. Are we, then, to belittle the English language because either it lacked certain ideas or because it preferred to import bodily foreign words expressive of certain religious terms instead of using its own words or of making up words on existing lines?
It can not be doubted that the actual foundation exists in every language whereon can be laid the superstructure of words necessary to convey the message of the Gospel. Nor can any existing language, Latin or English, be considered as the sacred language. The Blessed Saviour himself spoke in Aramaic, and yet the knowledge of His words and acts and the story of the carrying out of man's salvation, both by His words and also by His life, have come to the world not though Aramaic, but through another language, Greek. To-day the Roman Catholic Church looks upon Latin as the sacred language, and the English Church for its part is apt to regard English as the one and only language, whereas the message of Pentecost is that no one language is above another in this respect, and that every man has a right to look on his own language as God-inspired and existing for the purpose of conveying to him and his the divine message of salvation.
To doubt that the languages of so-called savages contain sufficient words and ideas to use in promulgating the Christian religion is surely tantamount to denying that man was made originally in the image of God and was intended to seek God if haply he might feel after Him and find Him.
Wherever translations of the Bible, etc., have been made in Melanesia it has always been found that it was possible to provide from the native tongue words and terms corresponding to the root ideas of the [164/165] original; thus, in the Solomons it is easy to render salvation, i. e., health, Sa'a mauri to be alive, mauringe health, maurihe life; truth, Sa'a wala'imolinge; faith, Sa'a hii-wala'imolinge, i. e., feeling to be true; atonement, Sa'a ha'a'ureruru, i. e., to cause to have friendly relations with. Similarly, rendering are available for such words as spirit, way, light, and for repent, redemption, i. e., purchase, grace, i. e., gift, though this latter rendering is confessedly imperfect. The idea of love is difficult to render into Melanesian; the word used in Mota, tapeva, denotes propitiation and gift as well as love; the Sa'a word used means kindly-natured; the root of the Polynesian aroha, which is rendered as love, is aro, which appears in Florida, Solomon Islands, as arovi to pity, and in the Mota ma-garo-sa compassionate. The Maori of New Zealand uses the quasi-English ripeneta for repent, but no doubt a native equivalent could have been found corresponding to the radical notion of change of mind. In Mota and in many Melanesian languages the word used as a translation of pray is tataro, which really implies the invocation of a dead person and which was used as a preliminary utterance before the real words of invocation. In the Solomons tataro appears in San Cristoval and in Sa'a 'ataro or 'akalo a ghost, and in Polynesian Hawaiian kalokalo prayer; Samoan tatalo, prayer.
Some difficulty was experienced in Sa'a and Ulawa in finding a word to express pray. At first rihunga'i, a San Cristoval imported word, was used; then a word was found, are to invoke a spirit, arenga'i he'u to perform an ordeal with hot stones, calling on the name of certain ghosts or spirits, but no verbal noun formed from this arenga or arenga'inga met with approval. Eventually recourse was had to a verbal noun qao olanga formed from aqo ola to worship, hold communication with the ghosts, as an equivalent of prayer. In Sa'a there is also a word, palo which means to act officially, to worship, and its verbal noun palonga is either an act or worship. The word used so largely in Polynesian as an equivalent both for prayer and also for worship, lotu, has been imported into southern Melanesian and also into New Guinea by the missionaries. Dr. Codrington considers that the Sa'a word lo'u, to contract ceremonial defilement, is the same as this word lotu. The word lotu is said to mean bowing down as in prayer, and Dr. Codrington makes the Sa'a lo'u mean to fall from a ceremonial standard, be brought low. (Mel. Anthrop., p. 233.) Maori uses the quasi-English kororia for glory, where Mota has lengas bright radiance, and Sa'a has manikulu'anga fame, prestige, and a similar word might have been found in Maori.
The translation used in Sa'a for sin is oraha'a, the root idea of which is "excess," acting contrary to the accepted standard of morality of the place. The word conscience is extremely difficult to render into [165/166] Melanesian, and in Sa'a it was done by a periphrasis, the knowledge one has in oneself. But possibly the most difficult thing to translate into Melanesian is the Lord's Prayer. The very first phrase, "Our Father," presents considerable difficulty, and in the Mota rendering the word "our" has been omitted altogether, and the word Mama (vocative) is used by itself. Dr. Codrington defended Mama as the correct vocative for both numbers, but nevertheless tamamam our father, father of us, does actually occur elsewhere (Isaiah 63, 16) as a vocative. The Melanesian is not accustomed to addressing or even thinking of any person as father in a corporate relation to a number of people (beyond the more immediate family relationship); to his mind fatherhood is a personal and individual thing; nor again is he accustomed to think of the spiritual beings whom he worships as the fathers and protectors of their worshippers. Even in English the phrase "Our Father" occurs rarely as a vocative except in the biblical use or rarely in a poetic sense. Kingdom and will are both difficult words to find renderings for. A Melanesian knows nothing of a king, but chiefs occur everywhere and in Sa'a a word alahanga was adopted from alaha chief. For will the usual rendering is by a word equivalent to heart (breast) or by a periphrasis, what the heart is fixed on. A word for debt is common enough everywhere. In southern Melanesia there was a regular practice of money-lending or usury. Forgive is generally rendered by the equivalent from think away, sae 'asi in Sa'a, nom vitag in Mota.
Mr. Copland King has published a pamphlet entitled "Theological terms in native languages," which deals with this whole question in the sphere of the Pacific.
In an old catechism in the Mota language, printed by the Mission in the very early days, several things of interest occur, and light is thrown thereby on the development and evolution of the method of translation now in use. The catechism uses two English words for which native equivalents have since been found: papataiso for baptism, now rendered in Mota vasug rongo holy washing; glori for glory, now rendered lengas radiance. Evidently no equivalent for kingdom had as yet been found; in the Lord's Prayer, in the first instance where the word occurs, "Thy Kingdom come," the Mota renders it by a periphrasis, "Cause men to become Thy people"; in the second by the equivalent for "Thine are all things."
Also, curiously enough, in the Lord's Prayer there is a rendering of the opening word Our, taman kamam, i. e., Father-our, where the later books have only Mama Father; the relative pronouns "which" has been rendered iniko Thou, whereas the later books in Mota do not attempt to translate it, but have simply Mama avunana, O Father in heaven. In the Apostles' Creed the word now used as equivalent to believe, nomtup, had not come into use at the time of this catechism (nomtup = bring thought to a point; cease to have doubt, believe), nom to think [166/167] being used alone. In the modern Mota books the words "from thence" in the Creed have no equivalent, but in this old catechism a perfectly correct rendering nan ia is given.
It is quite clear that in the teaching of religion among the peoples of the western Pacific many foreign words and terms must necessarily be employed. Thus, in the early days Bishop Patteson used in Mota the Greek word basileia as an equivalent for kingdom, there being no native word available; and just lately Mr. King has used the same word in the Binandere (Papuan) Gospel translation. But when introducing this word what need is there for a translator to disguise it in the form pasideia, as is done in one London Missionary Society translation?
The Melanesian Mission, when importing classical words and New Testament words for which there is no equivalent, has preferred to write them in their English rather than their classical form, but the London Missionary Society in New Guinea and Torres Straits has used imported words in more or less of their classical form: areto, bread; karate, barley; satauro, cross; also the Hebrew kohena for priest. As a rendering for church, Bishop Patteson used log-lue in Mota, i. e., called out; and similar words obtain throughout the Melanesian Mission. The London Missionary Society has used ekalesia for church.
It is very difficult to render the word god. The Polynesian missions have all used the word atua, and this has also been imported by the Presbyterians into southern Melanesia among Melanesian peoples. This word atua seems to be on a level, possibly, with the Mota vui, as meaning a being that never was a man; or it may be that just as Fijian kalou, which once was supposed to mean god but now has been degraded from its high place--so perhaps, though one says it with fear and trembling, atua may in time be shown to be equivalent in a measure to the Fijian kalou or to the Mota tamate, and may mean a ghost of the dead, the disembodied spirit of a person. The missionaries of the eastern Pacific all spoke of the spiritual beings whom the people worshiped as gods, just as in the same way they found idols everywhere; but however this may be, it is safe to say that in the western Pacific there are neither gods nor idols. Even in Melanesian Fiji it was the custom to call the objects of the old worship gods, but Dr. Codrington write that Mr. Fison was "inclined to think all the spiritual beings of Fiji, including the gods, kalou, simply the Mota tamate, ghosts." Mr. Hocart has shown the truth of this conjecture in a paper in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. XLII, 1912. The Presbyterians in the New Hebrides also spoke of the spirits of the dead t-mat, Mota tamate, worshiped by the natives, as gods.
In the islands of Torres Straits the word god was translated as ad, the meaning of which was "something about which a tale was told," [167/168] or as augad, which meant totem. One translation in New Guinea has adopted the word god, but has disguised it as "kot." In Nguna, New Hebrides, the word used for god is suqe, which in the Banks Islands is the well-known secret society. When the stories about Qat in Mota first become known, it was supposed that the peoples of that part of the Banks Islands regarded Qat as creator and god. The Polynesian atua is given as meaning god in the dictionaries of the eastern Pacific, and Hazelwood gives god for kalou in Fijian, and doubtless suqe and t-mat are rendered as god in the dictionaries of the New Hebrides. Even if the suqe of the New Hebrides (Codrington, Mel. Anthrop. P. 102) has no connection with the suqe club of the Banks Group, yet the meaning is at any rate spirit rather than god. The Melanesian Mission, following the lead of Bishop Patteson, has used everywhere the English word god and has written it in its ordinary English spelling.
In every case where nothing is found akin to the idea required, and in consequence the English word is introduced, it seems better to introduce a foreign word whose meaning is above suspicion; the spelling of such a word is a matter of lesser moment; but where such varieties of pronunciation prevail, and among such widely different languages, it seems better to write the word in its original form and then let each set of people pronounce it in their own way.
There is no need to make a concession to the peculiarities of the native alphabet in each place, for it will generally be found that the people can make a sufficiently good attempt at the new sound to justify the retention of the old spelling, and God, e. g., to our eyes at least, looks better than Kot, and sheep than sipu. Once a concession is made to native orthography in such matters, the missionary finds himself writing, e. g., in Florida in the Solomons Guilikokusi for Wilcox, and Pulaneti for Plant. Santa Cruz is actually the only place in the sphere of the Melanesian Mission where the people find a real difficulty in pronouncing certain letters foreign to their alphabet.
The possession of the two forms of the personal pronoun, first person plural or dual, the inclusive and the exclusive, enables some finer shades of meaning to be set forth with greater clearness than is possible in languages which have not those forms. Thus in St. Luke 7, 5, the difference between the two words our and us which is understood only in English, is clearly expressed in Melanesian, the inclusive form being used in the first case, since He to whom they spoke was also a Jew, and the exclusive in the second case, since the synagogue had been built for themselves, the people of Capernaum. A similar case occurs in St. Luke 24, 20, where the word "our" applies to the people of Judea only, the two speakers evidently regarding Him to whom they were speaking as a stranger.
[169] THE QUESTION OF STANDARD LANGUAGES. In Melanesia every island has its own distinct speech. These can all be shown by the grammarian to be kindred and allied, but for all practical purposes they are separate and distinct. A Mota man going to Motalava, 8 miles away, unless he has had some previous knowledge of the language, would find himself unable to understand the speech of the people there. Many words, doubtless, would be the same, but the intonation is entirely different, the consonants and vowels are strangely at variance, and the Motalava words are clipped and chopped about almost beyond recognition. With more frequent communication bilingualism is getting more common, but it is a curious thing that when natives from various islands or places meet communication is held by each person or group of persons speaking in his or in their own tongue. Thus, a party from Malaita landing on Ulawa will speak Sa'a or Lau or Tolo and will be answered in Ulawan, and the general drift of the conversation seems to be understood quite readily. In a large measure this is doubtless due to that quickness of understanding which is characteristic of the Melanesian peoples generally.
Whereas smaller difference of dialect exist on every island, an island of quite moderate size, like Santa Maria, in the Banks Group, has two separate languages which vary considerably and which cause the two peoples practically to be unintelligible to one another. This sort of thing is multiplied several times over in a large island like Malaita. The language at the south end of Malaita is the same as that spoken at the village of Sa'a; in the Mara Masiki Channel, which divides Malaita in two, the language is that known at Sa'a as Tolo, and to this belongs the language spoken at Oroha near Sa'a, the sketch of which made by Bishop Patteson appears in Von der Gabelentz's "Melanesischen Sprachen." The language round the coast at the north end is known as Lau, and a knowledge of Lau will carry one from Sinerago, Diamond Harbour, on the northeast coast, to Langa-Langa, Alite Harbor, on the northwest coast. In the interior, at the north end, the people speak a language much like Lau but having distinct peculiarities. Along the coast there will be found variations of these three main types, such variations amounting almost to separate languages. Sa'a shows marked affinities to the Wango and Heuru languages in San Cristoval, whereas Lau has many points of similarity to the language of Florida, and the inland speech of the north end has likenesses to the language of Bugotu. All of the three main languages of Malaita have very decided resemblances to one another and all are certainly of a common stock, so that Sa'a, e. g., is more like Tolo than it is like Wango or Heuru.
Up to the present time the missionaries in the Melanesian Mission and in the Anglican Mission in New Guinea have been allowed to prepare translations of the Bible and prayer book, etc., in whatever [169/170] might be the language of their particular part, without any regard as to whether the language was or was not the language of a dominant people and as such likely to survive. This no doubt is very convenient for the people concerned and is also advantageous for the comparative philologist, who thus has valuable material provided for his studies, but where languages abound and translators are scare it does not seem wise to let men labor at a language unless there is some chance of that language surviving or being of use in more than its own limited sphere. It can not be doubted that if the native peoples survive the shock of civilization certain factors will cause some languages to be used in the future more extensively than others; such factors are (1) the use of a language by government or by traders, or (2) the dissemination of any language by reason of the vigor or the numbers of the people using it.
If the government of New Guinea were to adopt certain languages for use in specified areas, say, Motuan and Wedauan, to the exclusion of all others (at present the government officials use a jargon), then, although a certain amount of hardship would be imposed on the native peoples at the outset, the gain to the missions from having fixed languages for their educational work would ultimately more than compensate for any temporal hardships in that all linguistic work could be focussed on given languages and an ample literature could be created, and so far as the people themselves were concerned the children in one generation would have adapted themselves to the new conditions. One calls to mind that in England the standard Bible fixed the language just as Luther's Bible set the standard in Germany, and in France the language of the King's court became the standard language for the literature of the whole country.
The language of the island of Florida, where the seat of government of the Solomons is situated and where there is a vigorous and a Christian population, if taken up by the Government might be made to serve for all the eastern islands. The spread of such a standard literary language would be slow, and pending the establishment of such a literary language it is clearly the duty of missionaries to reduce to writing the language of the various parts and to use them for the purpose of teaching, although at the same time languages likely to be serviceable by virtue of their more extended use should be carefully selected. Failing the appointment of some one language for a group or district, the mission should develop various types of language in each island or sphere of work; thus for the greater part of San Cristoval the Heuru and Fagani languages might be made to serve, while Sa'a, Tolo, and Lau are also worthy of surviving on Malaita.
Up till the year 1917 the Melanesian Mission used Mota as the educational language in all its central schools. There was a time when owing to the congregating of all members of the staff at Norfolk Island during the summer, and to the excessive use of Mota in the school, all the other languages of the Mission came almost to be [170/171] neglected. Mota was in a fair way to being regarded as the sacred language of the Mission, and indeed it furnished popularly the standard by which all the other languages were supposed to be measured, and the fact that these languages were able to show words or usages that corresponded to those of Mota was apt to be construed philologically much in the same way as if the presence in the other Aryan tongues of words similar to Latin were held as proving that Latin was the root language of them all and not itself a branch language.
When native teachers speaking various languages have an education in a language like Mota, which is foreign to most of them, much care must be exercised in order that the ideas given in the course of teaching may be made quite clear to the minds of the pupils. Dr. Codrington used to get his pupils to write down the gist of the lesson in their own tongues that he might test thereby their understanding of it.
At the conference held in 1916 the staff of the Mission decided to make a change in the language used as the medium of instruction in the central schools; Mota was to be abolished and English substituted in its place. Effect has already been given to this determination. The reasons advanced publicly for the change from Mota to English were:
(1) Mota is not well known by the English staff in the Solomons and the languages spoken by the boys at the two central schools there do not bear any very great superficial likeness to Mota, so that Mota may be said to be practically a foreign tongue to all concerned.
(2) Only a small literature is available in Mota, and the learning of English would open the way for the provision of a larger literature.
(3) English is likely to become the language of general communication.
(4) The trained teachers ought to be able to act as interpreters for any white who might visit their villages.
Now, there is undoubtedly every reason why English should be taught as a part of the curriculum in the central schools (and also in the village schools if possible), but to do this is surely a different thing from making it the only means of communication at the central schools. While not contending for the continuance of Mota in the schools of the Solomons, one does contend strongly for the principle that the Melanesian should be taught Christianity through the medium of one of his own languages. English is a foreign language, but when all is said and done Mota can not possibly be classed as foreign. Outwardly it may present many dissimilarities from the Solomon Island languages, yet it is thoroughly and typically Melanesian, and any Melanesian can learn it or be taught it without any trouble whatever.
Mota has hitherto been of quite extraordinary value for purposes of translation; most of our translations into the other Melanesian languages were made in the first instance from Mota as a basis, and in many places it was quite possible thereby for a teacher of average [171/172] ability to make a fair rendering of psalms, canticles, and hymns for the beginnings of his work.
Bishop G. A. Selwyn advocated the teaching of the Melanesians at St. John's, Auckland, in English, but this was before Patteson came on the scene. Selwyn was a scholar, but it is doubtful whether he could be characterized as a linguist, nor had he the time to give to linguistic studies as Patteson had. His Maoris he taught in Maori, and one hears nothing of any proposal of his to abolish Maori as a medium of communication. He had perforce to adopt English for his Melanesians, just as he had to bring them away from their own country in order to teach them. What one feels about the substitution of English for a native language now in the Mission is that a veritable cardinal principle is in danger of being abandoned entirely, viz., the principle that every man should "hear the Gospel" in his own language.
THE NEED FOR A POLICY IN TRANSLATION WORK. The whole Bible has been translated into almost every Polynesian language. In Melanesia no complete Bible exists as yet, though the Mota Bible is practically complete. Certain small sections of the earlier books of the Old Testament were omitted purposely from it. In Papua no complete Bible exists, but some of the languages have a complete New Testament. In setting out to translate the Bible, what portion is the missionary to start on? How much of the Bible, or rather, how much of the Old Testament, is really required? These two questions must have occurred to the minds of all missionaries, yet it would seem that no one mission has ever formulated a definite scheme in the matter of directing or controlling biblical translation. With regard to the first question, as to what part of the Bible one should begin on, the Rev. Dr. Macfarlane, of the London Missionary Society in Torres Straits, wrote asking this question of Dr. Codrington, and the answer given was that it seemed best to make a beginning with the Gospel according to St. Luke. In the Melanesian Mission St. Luke and Acts were the first translations made by Bishop Patteson. Dr. Codrington states" "I wrote the middle of St. Matthew and St. Mark, the Passion being old. Bishop Patteson wrote St. John. I did almost all the Epistles."
Even apart from the necessity for translating the Psalms for use in the daily services, there can be no doubt that a translation of the Psalms should be made as soon as possible in order to encourage the devotional life of the people. The metrical version of the Psalms in the Indian language of Massachusetts was the first part of the Bible which John Eliot, the apostle of the American Indians, published, and in the singing of the Psalms he found the readiest means of arresting attention and the simplest expression for the religious feelings of his child-natured people.
[173] No choice could be made in the Epistles as to which should be translated in preference to others, but the translator will naturally make what progress he can with them all. If a people is to receive the honor of having the Gospel message written in its own tongue the four Gospels and the Acts must surely be the minimum amount of translation done, and it is hard to see how practical religion can be developed at all among a people unless they have a copy of the Epistles, the application of the Gospels, ready to their hands.
In very few cases will it be possible for much of the Old Testament to be translated, either in the languages in the sphere of the Melanesian Mission or in those of New Guinea, owing to the multiplicity of languages and to the comparative dearth of missionaries and to the need of working in the first place on the New Testament. Moreover, if the people have a New Testament it is hard to see what need there is to undertake any systematic translation of the whole of the Old Testament.
A list of translations and of books published for use in the Melanesian Mission is as follows:
(1) New Hebrides.
Raga: Prayer Book, St. Luke, Genesis, Harmonized Scripture Gospel Lessons, Hymns.
Omba: Prayer Book, Harmonized Scripture Gospel Lessons, Hymns.
Maewo: Prayer Book (small), Harmonized Scripture Gospel Lessons, Hymns.(2) Banks Islands.
Lakona: Prayer Book (small).
Mota: Prayer Book, New Testament, Old Testament, Harmonized Scripture Gospel Lessons, Commentary on St. Matthew, Introductions for Catechumens, English Lesson Book, Codrington on the Miracles and Parables, Hymns.(3) Torres Islands.
Vava: Prayer Book, Canonical Gospels and Epistles, Hymns.
(4) Santa Cruz:
Ndeni: Prayer Book, Canonical Gospels, Hymns.
(5) Solomon Islands.
Ulawa: Prayer Book, New Testament, Catechism for the Children of the Church, Hymns.
Sa'a: Prayer Book, New Testament, Catechism for the Children of the Church, Hymns.
Lau: Prayer Book (small), Gospels, Hymns (few).
Fiu: Prayers and Hymns (small).
Wango: Prayer Book (small) and Hymns, St. Luke, Harmonized Scripture Gospel Lessons.
Guadalcanar: Prayer Book (small), St. Luke, Hymns.
Florida: Prayer Book, Gospels, Canonical Epistles, Harmonized Scripture Gospel Lessons, Catechism for the Children of the Church, Hymns.
Bugotu: Prayer Book, Book of Psalms, New Testament, Portions of the Books of the Prophets, Hymns.[174] From this table it will be seen that much translation yet remains to be done. Florida, which is by far the most important language in the Solomons, has no complete New Testament. Dr. Codrington has included a small grammar of the Florida language in his "Melanesian Languages," but naturally he was not able to do for it what he did for Mota and we still await a full grammar of the language.
After sixty years of life, the Mission has only three complete New Testaments and only two dictionaries, including the present dictionary of Ulawa and Sa'a. A grammar of Wango exists in manuscript. The paucity of grammars is much to be deplored. Sketches made by Dr. Codrington might conceivably have been filled up even if no new ones were made independently, but the grammars of Sa'a, Ulawa, and Lau are the only ones that have been printed since Dr. Codrington's great work containing grammars of 38 Melanesian languages was published in 1884.
It would certainly be desirable to get native teachers to make initial translations of the Gospels through the medium of Mota or otherwise. The Mota New Testament, however, needs revising. It was reprinted a year or two ago from stereotype plates and a few of the printers' errors were corrected, but the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge would not allow any alterations that ran over two lines.
Any translations made by native would serve as a basis for future work by the missionaries themselves and would also provide grammarians with valuable material for comparative study. Thus there seems to be no reason why in the case of the Tolo language, e. g., in Malaita, some of the teachers at Tawani'ahi'a on the west coast who know both Tolo and Sa'a should not use the Sa'a translation of the Gospels for work in their own language. Since Bishop Patteson's time no further investigation has been made of the Tolo language, though it is an important language both on Malaita and also at Marau Sound on the south end of Guadalcanar.
THE VALUE OF THE STUDY OF MELANESIAN LANGUAGES. The study of Melanesian languages is an absolute necessity for the elucidation of problems of language in the western Pacific, and one might go further and say that light had been thrown on languages so far away from Melanesian as Madagascar and Malay by the working out of the details of the grammars of the Melanesian languages. What a flood of interest is created by Dr. Codrington's discovery of the identity of the Omba, New Hebrides, word heno and the Florida hanu with the Malagasy ano! In these three languages this word stands in place of a personal name, and the personal article is prefixed, so that i heno, a hanu, i ano, are identical and mean "so-and-so." The two great Melanesian scholars, Bishop Patteson and Dr. Codrington, by [174/175] their analysis of words and by comparative studies, have shown that the structure of the Polynesian and Melanesian languages is practically the same. They have shown that in both types the following features occur:
Adjectives are formed by prefix or suffix. Time particles are used with verbs. Transitive suffixes are added to verbs. Pronouns are suffixed to nouns to denote possession. The personal pronouns are preceded by the personal article (Mota i-nau, Maori a-hau, Malay a-ku).
In "Melanesian Languages" it has been proved conclusively, by evidence produced from languages of Melanesian stock, that the personal pronouns are the same in all the Oceanic languages, also that the interrogatives are radically the same throughout and have similar uses. Polynesian scholars generally have paid little attention to Melanesia, yet the evidence of language is all conclusive of the close relationship which exists between Polynesian and Melanesian. The failure on the part of Polynesian scholars to study Melanesian languages has caused them to make considerable mistakes in etymology and also to overlook several very patent grammatical characteristics of the Polynesian languages. A good many of the derivations in Tregear's "Maori Comparative Dictionary" are shown to be incorrect on comparison with the kindred forms in Melanesia. Also, one can not but think that the tendency to philosophize about the religion of the Polynesian and his consequent outlook on life would have been kept within more moderate bounds had the investigators been a little more content to do spade work and dig into the matter after the practical fashion of Dr. Codrington in his book on Melanesian anthropology.
It has been maintained that the Melanesians had adopted Polynesian forms of speech; that in fact the Polynesians were like the Romans of old and had imposed their speech upon the peoples with whom they mixed; but the facts of the case seem to be that, so far at least as language is concerned, the two peoples belong to one family, and also that of the two types the Melanesian is the older and is less worn and stands to Polynesian somewhat as Anglo-Saxon does to modern English; also that the explanation of many Polynesian peculiarities of speech is to be found in the typical Melanesian usages.
Thus with regard to the use of the passive in Polynesian, a use which has no counterpart whatever in Melanesian, the present writer, owing to his knowledge of Melanesian, has been able to show elsewhere that the Polynesian passive is compounded of adjectival suffixes added to verbal suffixes, and that the gerundives, so common in Polynesia but hardly appearing at all in Melanesia, are composed of the verbal suffixes and noun endings. These verbal suffixes are among the commonest features of the Melanesian languages, but with the single exception of Samoan they can not be said to appear at all prominently [175/176] in Polynesia, though on Melanesian analogies their presence may be detected in the words in the dictionaries. Also, curiously enough, one of the Melanesian adjectival suffixes, na (which is a passive ending in Polynesia), has been noticed in only one Polynesian language, and that only by deduction from a Melanesian example: Niu_ tavana clear, open; Mota wawana wide and flat; Dyak papan plank; Omba wawa open sea; Sa'a taha to be open, clear; Maori tawha chasm (Sa'a tahalaa chasm), tawhai to stretch forth the arms.
Also in Malay, another example of a late language with much decayed forms of speech, Melanesia again supplies a means whereby correct deductions may be made as to the construction of various words and possibly also of various forms of speech, e. g., the presence of verbal suffixes and of noun suffixes.
Apart from Dr. Codrington's study of the Melanesian forms, who would have known that apa in siapa, the interrogative pronoun in Malay, apa what? siapa? who? is a form of the word which in Melanesia appears as sava, hava, etc., and that the si in siapa is really the personal article which appears in Javanese before the names of persons? Since in many words which are common to Malay and Javanese the Malagasy suppresses the initial s, this Javanese si, the personal article, is shown by Dr. Codrington to be in all probability the Malagasy i, which is a personal article placed before the proper names of persons. Thus siapa who, in Malay is shown to correspond to the Mota i sava who? and sa mate, the deceased, in Malay is i mate in Mota.
In this way, through the study of Melanesian linguistics, "the use of the personal article--a remarkable feature in a language--is found to prevail in Melanesia, in Polynesia, in Madagascar, and in the Malay Archipelago." This discovery alone is surely sufficient to establish the importance of the study of Melanesian languages.