All through Polynesia the generic name among foreigners for a native is Kanaka, which is the Hawaiian word for man, or the human race. The Marquesan man is kenana or enata or enana, and woman vehine. The Tahitians and Hawaiians say taata or tane for man, and vahine or wahine for woman. The French word for Kanaka is canaque. This word is opprobrious or not according to the degree of civilization. The Marquesans often call themselves canaques, as a negro calls himself a negro; but I have seen a Tahitian of mixed blood weep bitterly when termed a Kanaka. Perhaps it is as in the Southern part of the United States, where the colored people refer to one another commonly as niggers, but resent the word from a white.
Pig in Marquesan is puaa or puaka.
Piggishness in English means greediness; but cochonnerie, the French verbal equivalent, means filth or obscenity, and in Marquesan has its counterpart in haa puaa, to be indecent; hee haa puaa, to go naked, and kaukau haa puaa, to bathe naked, words doubtless originating under missionary tutelage, as when the Catholic priests were all-powerful, they made laws forbidding nudity in public. In fact, a noted English writer who spent some time here was arrested and fined for sleeping upon his veranda one hot noon in the garb of Adam before the apple episode. The Catholic missionaries here never bathed in the rivers or sea, and had no bath arrangements in their house. Godliness has no relation to cleanliness. Celibate man the world over had the odor of sanctity.
Shark is mako, and, curiously, tumu mako is a gross eater, or “pig” in our adopted sense, while vehine mako is a prostitute. E haa mako is to deliver over to prostitution. Probably this last phrase has been coined by the clergy for lack of a more opposite one. Hateté in Tahitian is chastity, for which the natives had no word nor idea.
When card-playing was introduced by the whites, its nomenclature was adapted. Peré or pepa are cards. Pere is play, pronounced p’ray, and pepa is paper. Taimanu, heata, tarapu, and pereda are diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades; teata is the knave; te hai—the high—is the ace; and furu is a full. Faráoa is flour or bread and faráoa peré—flour play, flour or bread-like playing-cards—are biscuits or crackers. Afa miniti is a half-minute, or a little while. Others of the hundreds of bastard words now in the language and dictionary are: Niru, needle; pia, beer; poti, boat; purumu, broom; putete, potato; punu, spoon; Roretona, London; tara, dollar; tavana, governor or chief; tohita, sugar; uaina, wine; tihu, dix sous, or half a franc; fira, fiddle; puka, book. I must not omit the delightful verkuti for very good, or all right, or the stiff eelemosina, for alms, for which also, the Polynesians had no word, as no one was a beggar.
As did the American Indians, the Polynesians learned English and other European tongues through religion. The discoverers, who were officials, traders, or adventurers gained a smattering of the native language, but hardly ever had the perseverance, if the education, to gather a thorough knowledge. Almost all the first modern dictionaries and grammars were written by clerics. The prime reason for their endeavors was to translate the sacred Scriptures into their neophytes’ language and to be able to preach them. The Bible has been the first book of all outlandish living languages to be reduced to writing for hundreds of years.
Consequently, its diction, its mode of speech, and its thoughts have molded the island tongues. Words lacking to translate biblical ideas had to be invented, and the missionaries became the inventors. Some with Hebrew and Greek and Latin at their service used bits of them to create new words, and others drew on their imaginations, as do infants in naming people and things about them. In writing their dictionaries, they limited the European vocabulary to necessary, nice, or religious words, and the vernacular to all they could find, with a strict omission of those conveying immodest ideas. As the Polynesians had no morals from the Christian point of view, a great number of their commonest words were lost.
The Bible was done into Marquesan in the forties by English Protestants, and the old Hawaiian missionaries in the Marquesas made much of it in their teachings. It is not popular in French, and few copies survive. The Catholics do not recommend it to the laity. Protestantism is apathetic; yet I have seen a leper alone on his paepae deep in the Scriptures, and when I asked him if he got comfort from them, I was answered, “They are strong words for a weak man, and better than pig.”
The same corruptions that have destroyed the original purity of the Hawaiian and Tahitian tongues has marred that of these islands. The French officials had hardly ever remained long enough to encompass the language here, and seldom had they been of the scholarly type.
Rulers over colonies make feeble effort to speak well their subjects’ tongues. Perhaps two of the dozen governors, military and civil, the Philippines have had under American ownership could talk Spanish fairly well, and none spoke the aboriginal tongues which are the key to native thought. They knew the governed through interpreters, and therefore knew nothing really of them. As our boys laugh at foreigners’ ignorance, so do foreign colonists laugh at ours. I saw a famous American governor stand aghast when, asking his Filipino host, as he thought, for “a night lamp then and there,” the astounded presidente of a village brought before the assembled company a something never paraded in polite society.