The following facts connected with the Polynesian languages, are laid before the reader, less for the sake of enlarging the list of Polynesian peculiarities than as a preparation for certain philological phænomena, which will occur in the ethnology of America, and with the view of showing a process by which language, over and above the changes which are brought about by _natural_ changes, may be modified _artificially_--a point upon which we have few _data_, but plenty of extreme opinions. _Ceremonial language of parts of Polynesia._--The Samoans, ceremonious to each other, are preeminently so towards their chiefs; one of their methods of showing respect being to eschew certain words in common use, when addressing a superior, and to substitute for them others, which are considered more refined. Hence, a careful speaker will never address a higher personage in the terms appropriate to an inferior one. To a common man, on entering a house, the salutation is _ua mai=you have come_. To a householder, _ua alala mai_. To a low chief, _ua malui mai_. To a high chief, _ua susu mai_. To the sovereign, _ua afio mai_. In Tonga there are traces of a second order of ceremonial synonyms; _i.e._ over and above those ordinarily in use, there is a series for the particular _divine_ chief Tiutonga.[85] CEREMONIAL. TIUTONGA. COMMON. ENGLISH. Fofonga langi mata _face_. Ilo taumafa kai _eat_. Mamata taka tio _see_. Ofai hala mate _dead_. Tengitangi buluhi mahaki _sick_. Toka tofa moe _sleep_. In Tahitian, an excessively figurative manner of speech is said to supersede the proper system of ceremonial synonyms, the _houses_ of the chief being the _clouds of heaven_; his _canoe_, the _rainbow_; his _voice_, the _thunder_, and so on. The names too of the chiefs are almost always significant, and almost always compound, and, in some cases, they run to a very considerable length, as _Tai-ma-le-langi=sea and sky_; _Tau-i-te-ao-bu=suspended in the blue heavens_; _Ta-lana-tupu-a-pai-ta-lani-nui=the sky increasing and striking the great heaven_. Now the owners of any such names as these are supposed to be complimented by the Tahitians ceasing to employ, in the language of their daily intercourse, one, or more, of the words which formed parts of them; so that, in the case of _Tai-ma-le-langi_, the syllables _tai_, _mai_, _le_, or _langi_, are lost to the common language, until the death of the chief, so designated. After his decease, however, they return to the language. In this way, between the voyages of Cook and Vancouver, no less than forty or fifty words had been superseded by new ones: indeed, of the first ten numerals, four are now different from what they were in Cook's time.