MORIORI

The inhabitants of the Chatham Islands (which lie about 400 miles to the eastward of New Zealand) speak a corrupt form of Maori. It has been asserted that the Moriori are the autochthones of New Zealand driven forth by the Polynesian immigrants; but investigation proves them to have been of Polynesian speech and traditions. Their language is a sub-dialect of New Zealand Maori, differing little (save in a slovenly dropping of vowels) from that of their brothers on the larger islands. Exception must be made in two curious particulars. They have the tch sound as used in the Friendly Islands, and unknown in New Zealand: thus, the Maori word tamaiti, a child, is pronounced by the Moriori as tchimitchi. The other peculiarity is a very interesting and puzzling phenomenon in comparative philology, viz., that the Causative takes the form hoko, used in Eastern Polynesia, and not whaka (haka, aka, faka, fa‘a, &c.), common to New Zealanders, Samoans, Tongans, Rarotongans, &c.

The Moriori dialect has preserved in its long isolation some ancient and precious words lost to the vocabulary of New Zealand; except for this, it would hardly deserve notice as a separate dialect.