Language.

The speech of Aitutaki is a dialect of the Polynesian language. It is very similar to that of New Zealand, and, except for a word here and there, both branches can readily understand each other. Maori seems to have retained more of the older words in active use. These were readily recognised and understood by the older people of Aitutaki, though a different word was in common use in their own dialect.

The early missionaries, who introduced writing, unfortunately did not represent the H sound in the alphabet they prepared, owing to its not being well aspirated. A similar error occurred in the spelling of Maori place names in parts of New Zealand. A case in point is Wanganui, which should be Whanganui. Mr. Stephen Savage, who has been for many years with the Cook Islands Administration as Interpreter and Registrar of the High Court and Native page xxiiLand Court, agrees with me that the H sound has been wrongly left out of the written language. In the dictionary that he is compiling he proposes to put in the H where it is pronounced.

The Cook Islanders pronounce the H in much the same way as the Maoris of Taranaki and Whanganui. It is not so well aspirated as in other parts of New Zealand, but it is nevertheless present, and should be written. That an error has been committed in the past is no just reason for perpetuating it. It is only fair to the inhabitants that their language should be represented as correctly as possible.

In the intensive study of the Polynesians, students of comparative etymology have enough difficulty, without being led astray by errors in the written words that have received the sanction of usage. Words with an H sound have nothing to distinguish them in the spelling from similar words that are without the H sound. There is not even a comma to mark where it should be. The following table of a few examples will draw attention to this anomaly.

Aitutaki words, without the H, and with the sounded but unspelt H.

It will be noticed that the Maori Wh sound is represented in Aitutaki by the H. Who could tell from the appearance of Aa that it represented the Maori word Whawha? The Maori causative Whaka is represented by the written Aka, which should be Haka.

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A further example of the unnecessary difficulty that may arise is seen in the words Aso (Samoan), Kaho (Maori), and Kao (Aitutaki). All have the same meaning—the elements in the framework of a house to which the thatch is attached. Aso and Kaho are identical in derivation, because it is known that the Samoans have dropped the K and changed the H into S. The identity of Aso with Kao, however, is not so evident until we know that Kao should be written as Kaho.

Another error likely to occur is that students, from a comparative study of words, may think that an H has been dropped from a part of a word where it never really existed. Large¹ has stated that the forepart of a canoe is called the aumi in the Cook Islands. Because the join that fixes the forepart of the hull to the main hull in the large Maori canoes was called the haumi, it was held that the two words were identical. But the aumi vaka means the bow of the canoe, as opposed to the stern, muri vaka, and never means the join. The Maori haumi means the join, whether for the bow end or the stern. Conjecture as to the change of meaning in two supposedly identical words would be saved if the Cook Islands H were written in its right place. Then, instead of aumi being haumi, it would be correctly written as aumihi. Between aumihi, the bow, and haumi, the join, there is no connection either in meaning or in derivation.

Another difficulty is that a word may be accepted as it is written because the meaning suits. The canoe of Ru-enua ran aground on a sandbank inside the Ootu channel. The bank was named Tai-moana. Without the services of an historian, this name would be accepted as correct and appropriate. The meaning of ocean tide would be taken to indicate that it was due to the tide that the canoe grounded. The correct pronunciation, however, is Tahimoana, and records the fact that the crew disembarked to scrape or sweep away the sand to re-float the canoe. Instead of ocean tide, the word meant the sweeping away (of sand) in the sea.

After consultation with Mr. Savage, various old men in Aitutaki and Rarotonga, and the Ven. Archdeacon H. W. Williams in New Zealand, the H has been written in the words in which in my opinion the sound occurs. In place names and proper names I did not care to make the page xxivchange, but have left it for official investigation. In some cases, however, the H has been inserted in some proper names and gone into print, before corrections could be made. Readers acquainted with the present written language of the Cook Islands have only to leave the H out to recognise the words in their old form. The question of representing the H by the' was duly considered. This signifies the glottal closure in which the sound is suppressed and the letter representing it is elided. It is held, however, that the H sound is actually present in the Cook Islands dialect. The sound of the word for flat is more truly represented by paraharaha than by para'ara'a.