SHORT GRAMMAR.
I. Alphabet. Letters of the Roman Alphabet are used to represent the sounds of the native speech; but it may be said that few letters represent precisely the same sound in Mota and in English. The language is printed in the main for the use of native people, and for the sake of simplicity a single letter is used where diacritical marks would be required to exhibit differences with exactness; as e.g. in the vowels and in the consonants q, r. No letters are used arbitrarily; the letter is used as representing the sound in the native language which answers in a general way to that which is commonly represented by that letter; as e.g. t, p, and v are not equivalent to English t, p, and v, and g is far from the hard English g; yet the dental, labial, and guttural character is common. In one case only is an italic letter in, common use among the Roman type; n is printed for ng, which represents a variation of n. In writing, dots are added above the n; and when, as in this Dictionary, Mota words are printed in italics, the change is shown by a Roman n.
Aspirates are unknown.
Vowels; a, e, i, o, u, with their proper sound. There is a longer and shorter a, e, i. A broad a, as in gap, may be taken for a short o; but is to the native without question a. So also a sound of o may be taken for u, as in the English 'pull,' in a close syllable, e.g. in tol toa, a fowl's egg; but in toliu, where the syllable of the same word is not closed, it is plainly o; and a native will rarely, if ever, doubt.
Diphthongs are ae, ai, ao, au; clearly distinct, as in gae, gai, gao, gau.
Consonants are k, g; t; p, v, w; q; m, m, n, n; r, l; s. Of these k, w, m, n, s, have the English sound.
1. The sound of hard g is never heard; the letter is used for a guttural trill, sometimes hardly heard (and so answering to the 'break' in Samoan), sometimes almost k, sometimes nearly r. Thus when the language was first written tagai was takai or tarai, gate was ate.
2. t is never the English dental, but has a blunter sound.
3. The Mota labials are less explosive than the English; v approaches b; p approaches v. A syllable is closed with w; gaw is distinct from gau.
