L. Andrews
1854
Language, in all parts of the earth, is the principal medium of communication between men. It is employed only by rational beings, or such as to have the faculty of speech; that is, of uttering articulate sounds. Language is the medium of communicating ideas in two ways: 1st, by the use of the voice in the utterance of articulate sounds termed words; 2nd, by characters representing articulate sounds. The former is addressed to the ear, the latter to the eye. Languages, like the people of the earth, are divided into great families. These again, owing to some local or other circumstances, are divided into Dialects. A dialect is a branch of some more general language. A dialect is formed by leaving off from the forms of the general language, or by adding something new to them. The pronunciation may to some extent be altered etc. These changes may be produced by time, accident, culture or neglect. Most if not all the dialects of Polynesia appear to have had the same origin, which, in all probability, was the Malayan. As the Islands of the great Pacific Ocean, constituting Polynesia, are many and far separated, it is reasonable to suppose that their languages must vary from each other; and this is found to be a fact. Every language has certain great fundamental principles upon which it is constructed. These principles differing from each other constitute their peculiarity. Hence, every language in its etymology and syntax must be regulated by its own laws: though some general principles may run through the whole. The laws and usages of a language reduced to a system, or the principles of its construction drawn out to the eye, constitute its grammar. Grammars may be general or particular as they treat of the principles of some one of the family of languages, or of the language of a particular country in a general manner; or they may take up some particular dialect of a language and may elucidate its principles more minutely than could be done in a general grammar. The obj
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