[BOOK][B] A dictionary of the Maori language

BHW Williams - 1921 - books.google.com
BHW Williams
1921books.google.com
HISTORY. OMITTING the short lists of words given by Cook, Parkinson, Savage, and
Nicholas, the first step towards a dictionary of the Maori language was the vocabulary of 100
pages published by the Church Missionary Society with the Grammar in 1820.* The material
was supplied by the missionary Kendall, but it is to Samuel Lee, Professor of Arabic in the
University of Cambridge, that the credit is due of laying the foundations of a satisfactory
orthography, the only matter for regret being that he did not adopt single symbols for the …
HISTORY. OMITTING the short lists of words given by Cook, Parkinson, Savage, and Nicholas, the first step towards a dictionary of the Maori language was the vocabulary of 100 pages published by the Church Missionary Society with the Grammar in 1820.* The material was supplied by the missionary Kendall, but it is to Samuel Lee, Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge, that the credit is due of laying the foundations of a satisfactory orthography, the only matter for regret being that he did not adopt single symbols for the letters now denoted by ng and wh respectively. The vocabulary is, naturally, very faulty in many respects, but has a real value for the student of the language. Dr. Evans, of the New Zealand Company, contemplated the publication of a Grammar and Vocabulary,† which was announced as forthcoming in an advertisement on the back of Ward's" Information relative to New Zealand"(Parker, London, 1839), but apparently never saw the light. It seems not improbable that the material collected by Evans was made use of by Dieffenbach in the second volume of his" Travels in New Zealand"(London, 1843), Part II of that volume being an essay on the language, with examples and translations, and Part III a grammar and dictionary. The latter, which occupies forty-four pages, gives no examples of the use of words, but includes a number of words not found in the earlier work.
In 1844 the Mission Press at Paihia issued the first edition of Williams's Dictionary, which had been ready for the press six years before. The actual dictionary consisted of 185 pages, many of the words being followed by illustrative examples. The second edition, which was printed in London, followed in 1852. This contained a large amount of new matter, including valuable contributions from Dr. Maunsell, whose projected dictionary was
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