A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language : with a preliminary ...

DISSERTATION. ccxlix
was shipwrecked wlien a boy on one of the Friendly islands,
and having lived many years among the natives, had acquired a
thorough practical acquaintance with their language, the
Tonga. His narrative was compiled by Dr. Martin, and to it
is appended a vocabulary, very judiciously prepared by the
same party, from the oral communications of the voyager.*
I shall attempt to draw some evidence in favour of the hypo-
thesis which I have suggested from Mariner's vocabulary. This
consists of about 1823 words, yet contains 97 which are un-
questionably Malayan. Now, if the Tonga vocabulary were as
copious as that of Williams for the Maori or New Zealand, and
had throughout the same proportion of Malayan words as it
now possesses, the number of these would amount to about 280,
whereas the Maori dictionary contains only 86. If the same
inference were drawn from the dictionary of the Marquesa and
Sandwich islands dialect, the Malayan words would rise to
325, but the actual number in Mosblech's vocabulary is no
more than 74.
Some of the Malayan words in the brief vocabulary of the
Tonga are not to be found in the more copious ones of the
Maori, Marquesa, and Sandwich island, and as a few of this
class are significant, I shall give a short list of them :
TONGA.
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