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New Zealand Mail, Issue 661, 24 October 1884, Page 18

The Maori lexicon is a subject which has come before Parliament again and again during the - last twenty-three years, and, it seems, is not quite disposed of yet. It was introduced for the first time on August 13, 1861, when a resolution was passed affirming that such a work was desirable —a work which, as was then said, should contain every known Maori word, with authentic examples in each case of genuine Maori usage. The subsequent history of the subject was related in the House on the 26th of September by the Native Minister, in answer to a question by Mr Samuel. From his narrative we learn that the work was instrusted to Mr Colenso in 1565 ; that owing to illuess Mr Colenso w r as not able to complete the work by the stipulated time, April 1, 1870 ; that in 18S0 the then Native Minister had come to the conclusion that the work _ has been definitely abandoned ; that it had cost the country £llBO, and that specimen sheets had been presented to Parliament in 1880 and 1882. It will strike most people as a matter of regret that a work promising to be so useful, and so interesting from a scientific point of view should be simply thrown away after so much progress has been made with it and so much money spent upon it ; and yet. the question of proceeding with it is one wnich cannot be satisfactorily settled offhand. Such, at least, appears. to be the opinion of the Native Minister, for he intends to communicate with Mr Colenso, and to ask him what he proposes to do in the future. The amount of money which would be required to complete the work is an important element in the question ; but another of still greater importance is whether the character of the work as indicated by the specimen sheets is such as to warrunt the expenditure of any further money upon it. To this point we now desire to draw attention.. The paper presented to Parliament in ISS2. consists of twenty pages, of which sixteen belong to the first, or Maori-English part, and two to the second, or Eng-lish-Maori part; and as the words given have been culled from different parts of the work, it may be assumed that thev furnish a fair sample of the whole. It will not require a very thorough examination of these specimens to -satisfy anyone who has a moderate knowledge of the language, that Mr Colentso has altogether mistaken his vocation in undertaking the task of compiling a lexicou. Error and confusion abound. in every page. To begin at the beginning, A, the first letter of the alphabet, is first treated of as a letter entering into the composition of words, and we are told that, “ grammatically considered, it is of the first importance in the formation of words and sentences.” Illustrations of this statement are then given in groups numbered from 1 to

8, occupying two columns. . From No. I we obtain the information that “ it is the termination or last letter of all passive verbs.” This is true so far as it goes ; but the termination of most passive verbs consists of something more than the letter a, there being ten or eleven different forms of it. In the remaining 7 groups a is not, as in the case of the passive termination, a mere letter entering into the composition of a word, but is an independent word in itself. In the examples given in group 2, it is a particle which, under certain limitations, precedes proper names, personal pronouns, and a peculiar class of local nouns. In number 8 Mr Colenso is utterly at fault with this same particle, which, he says, “is prefixed to adverbs and prepositions of place for intensification or emphasis, . . . possibly in some instances for euphony.” The words here I called adverbs or prepositions are simply some of the local nouns above mentioned, which differ from common nouns in that they are definite in signification, and eannot be rendered into English without the use of an article or demonstrative pronoun. They partake therefore of the character of proper names and obey similar rules, the particle a adding no intensification or emphasis, nor even contributing to euphony. Such nouns are honei, “ this place,” raro, “ the - bottom,” rung a, “ the top,” &c. The Maori language has no single word for “ under,” and therefore resolves it into “at the bottom of,” or “ on the under side of,” Jci raro e; and so with the rest. In the other groups a is a preposition, as anyone may ascertain by comparing the examples with those which are given under the preposition a. It is mere nonsense therefore to speak of its being prefixed “to give the noun following or preceding an active meaning,” or “to show the natural relation downwards,” <fce. In group 3 the preposition is confounded with the plural form of the possessive particle la. It would be easy to point out the same amount of confused blundering on the subsequent pages. There is a great parade of copiousness, too, which is altogether misleading. "Under the word Tuhu on page 17 there are placed no fewer than fiftyfour meanings, the great majority of which are not meanings of the word at all, though the signification of some of them may be expressed sometimes by a periphrasis into which the word Tuhu may be introduced. This method of what may be called bookfattening, may easily be apprehended by any English reader w r ho will take the trouble to run his eye down the fifty-nine meanings (?) of the English word “come” on pages 19 and 20, among which will be found such expressions as “be abased,” “ comply,” “ happen to,” “ change sides,” “ become public,” “ recover,” &o. —words the Maori rendering for which no one can be expected to look for under the word “ come.” A cursory inspection of the lesson books compiled by Mr Colenso for the beueiit of Maori school children fully bears out the opinion which is forced upon us by the specimens of his “ lexicon.” “ Say to John to sit down, and to read his book,” will hardly be called idiomatic English, but the idioms of his Maori sentences are more peculiar often than this specimen of his English. “ The ship arriving at "Wellington on the top ot Monday” i runga i te manei, Fart 11., page 105, calls to mind the answer given by a gentleman to a friend who had invited him and his wife to come to dinner “ upon Thursday.” He accepted the invitation for his wife, but declined for himself, “ because Thursday would not carry double.” It is unfortunate that there is nothing as' yet to show for the £llBO already spent, but it would be a sad waste of money to spend any more in printing such an ill-assorted congeries of Maori and English words as Mr Colenso’s Lexicon. Before any further expense is incurred, let the specimens be submitted to Maori scholars of repute, such as the late Chief Judge of the Native Lands Court, Mr Fenton, or the present Judge Williams, and Mr H. T. Clarke, and let Ministers be guided in the matter by their opinion.