CHAPTER X

Pages 132 to 133.

The children of this age already show a very curious example of a phonetic self-consciousness in which they are almost as acute and discriminating as their elders. When the missionaries reduced the language to writing, there was no _k_ in the language, the _k_ positions in other Polynesian dialects being filled in Samoan either with a _t_ or a glottal stop. Soon after the printing of the Bible, and the standardisation of Samoan spelling, greater contact with Tonga introduced the _k_ into the spoken language of Savai’i and Upolu, displacing the _t_, but not replacing the glottal stop. Slowly this intrusive usage spread eastward over Samoa, the missionaries who controlled the schools and the printing press fighting a dogged and losing battle with the less musical _k_. To-day the _t_ is the sound used in the speech of the educated and in the church, still conventionally retained in all spelling and used in speeches and on occasions demanding formality. The Manu’a children who had never been to the missionary boarding schools, used the _k_ entirely. But they had heard the _t_ in church and at school and were sufficiently conscious of the difference to rebuke me immediately if I slipped into the colloquial _k_, which was their only speech habit, uttering the _t_ sound for perhaps the first time in their lives to illustrate the correct pronunciation from which I, who was ostensibly learning to speak correctly, must not deviate. Such an ability to disassociate the sound used from the sound heard is remarkable in such very young children and indeed remarkable in any person who is not linguistically sophisticated.