This is the most useful and comprehensive English-Tahitian, Tahitian-English dictionary available. The author, who was a devoted student of Tahitian for more than three decades, provides an extensive introduction to the language with detailed notes on grammar, usage, and pronunciation. This reprint edition has been re-sized to 6 inches x 9.25 inches, making it a convenient and handier alternative to larger-sized dictionaries.

A Tahitian and English dictionary, with introductory remarks on the Polynesian language, and a short grammar of the Tahitian dialect

A Tahitian and English dictionary with introductory remarks on the Polynesian language, and a short grammar of the Tahitian dialect: with an appendix containing a list of foreign words used in the Tahitian Bible, in commerce, etc.

With detailed notes on grammar, usage, and pronunciation, this is a useful and comprehensive English-Tahitian, Tahitian-English dictionary. The author, a student of Tahitian for more than three decades, also provides an extensive introduction to the language.

Prior to 1500 A.D. the Polynesians were the most widely spread people on earth, having settled an area of the Pacific, the Polynesian Triangle, twice the size of the United States. In this first reference guide to the mythology of these Vikings of the Pacific, Craig reviews Polynesian legends, stories, gods, goddesses, and heroes in hundreds of alphabetical entries that succinctly describe both characters and events. His wide-ranging and thorough introduction sets the subject in its geographic, historical, anthropological, and linguistic contexts, offering an illuminating overview of the origin of the Polynesians as a distinct people and tracing their voyages and settlements from Indonesia to Malaysia, Tonga, Samoa, the Marquesas, the various islands of eastern Polynesia, including Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. The introduction presents fascinating information on Polynesian navigational skills and the voyages themselves, as well as a chart that details the evolution of the thirty Polynesian languages and compares cognates from several of these languages. A simplified pronunciation guide and a selected list of Polynesian dictionaries and/or grammars are provided for those interested in pursuing the richness of the Polynesian languages. This introductory survey gives readers the necessary background to understand the origin, development, and dispersion of the myths throughout the Pacific basin. The Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology is the result of many years of research. The individual entries were gleaned from nearly 300 sources in English, German, French, and Polynesian languages with the majority extracted from a number of primary sources that date generally in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The printed source materials for this volume are fully described and listed by geographical group, including Maori, Cook Islands, Tahitian, Marquesan, Hawaiian, Samoan, and Tongan. General collections that retell the Polynesian stories are also surveyed. The entries are alphabetically arranged by major mythological figure; lesser characters can be located in the index. Short bibliographical citations--author, date, and page number--are included at the end of each main entry to direct readers to fuller information contained in the printed sources. An appendix provides valuable supplemental information on Polynesian gods and goddesses. This dictionary is sure to become a basic reference tool for libraries, students, and scholars of Pacific history and culture, as well as for courses in mythology, religion, and philosophy.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Writing from Invention to Decipherment contains a wealth of global scholarship on ancient writing systems from China, Mesopotamia, Central America, and the Mediterranean, to more recent newly created scripts such as the Rongorongo from Easter Island, the Caroline Island scripts, as well as the alphabet. The aim is to dig into the foundations of writing, showcasing the complexities and varieties of scripts, from their invention to the potential decipherment of poorly understood scripts. The volume offers state-of-the-art research on undeciphered scripts from the Aegean (as for example, Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A) or not completely deciphered (as for example Maya) scripts. From a methodological perspective, these contributions lay out how and why writing was invented, who used it, and to what ends. Here writing is presented as a multi-modal cultural phenomenon, that intersects and transcends neat discipline boundaries, within an inclusive approach bridging archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, and cognitive studies.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

Do, or should, dictionaries control language? How do they treat language change, both now and in the past? Which words do dictionaries leave out - and on what grounds? Dictionaries are far more than works which list the words and meanings of a language. In this Very Short Introduction Lynda Mugglestone shows that all dictionaries are partial and all are selective. They are human products, reflecting the dominant social and cultural assumptions of the time in which they were written. Dictionaries exist then not only as works which seek to document language, but also as cultural documents that are connected to the world in which they were produced. Exploring common beliefs about dictionaries, providing glimpses of behind the scenes dictionary makers at work, and confronting the problems of how a word is to be defined, Mugglestone shows that dictionaries are always, and inevitably, more than the crafting of a simple list of words. Concluding with a look at the range of modern dictionaries and transformations, from online dictionaries such as urbandictionary.com or wictionary to txt-spk and slang, she reveals the controversial nature of the debates about communication and language, showing that only in written and spoken English does the language of dictionaries exist in full. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.