Changes in Pronunciation

Te Ao Hou, June 1965, Page 46

Changes in Pronunciation As time went on they acquired new words from the new places where they were living, and they lost some old words. Furthermore, they came to pronounce some of the sounds in their language in a new way. These changes in pronunciation followed regular patterns which are known as ‘sound shifts’. Sound shifts occurred mostly in the case of consonants; though the vowels (that is to say, the sounds a, e, i, o, u and their combinations) also changed, these vowel changes did not follow such a clear pattern. Because the changes in the pronunciation of consonants did follow a clear pattern, it is possible to trace their history and thereby to show the hidden relationships which exist between these related languages. Here is an example. English : three Sanskrit : tri Latin : tres French : trois German : drei The same regular pattern of sound changes can be traced in the case of some other related consonants. As is well known, Polynesian languages

also belong to a single ‘family’, and show a similar relationship. Here are two examples: Maori : toru Hawaiian : kolu Samoan : tolu Maori : aroha Hawaiian : aloha Samoan : alofa In an article ‘The Oral Literature of the Polynesians’ which appeared in issue no. 49 of ‘Te Ao Hou’, Professor Bruce Biggs traces the different branches of the Polynesian ‘family’ back to a common source, saying that ‘By the beginning of the Christian era a language called Proto-Polynesian was spoken, most probably in Tonga or Samoa’. This language, he tells us, was the mother-tongue from which the various Polynesian languages—Maori, Hawaiian, Samoan, Rarotongan, and so on—were derived. While this explains the position within Polynesia, there remains the further question: from where did Proto-Polynesian come?