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Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 27 March 1922, Page 7

Illustrations of the language difficulties experienced by missionaries were given by the Bishop of Melanesia last week. It was interesting, he said, to note that any word could be any part of speech, and that while in some islands the natives put the object before the verb, in others it was the reverse. The sentence "The dog ate the biscuit they would express "The biscuit ate the dog." In fact, he said, it was I almost impossible to get the exact I formation and accent of the Melanesian ! tongue.