Page:A dictionary of the language of Mota.djvu/11

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PREFACE
ix

The same clanger besets the learner in the matter of the sounds of native language. These are, almost as a matter of course, represented by Roman letters. It is natural that the European should assume that these have in the native tongue the same value that they have in his own; an Englishman, for example, tends to pronounce g, t, p, v, in Mota as in English. Thus the danger everywhere is that the true native language will perish in words and sounds, and that a new and inferior form of speech will supplant the true original in the mouths of the natives themselves.

R. H. C.

Chichester, March 1896.