ISLAND NOMENCLATURE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 171, 22 July 1942, Page 4

ISLAND NOMENCLATURE

Your contributor, J.C., is not quite right about "Tulagi." The Solomon Island tongues are more guttural than the Fijian dialects and much more so than the Polynesian. The formulators of written language for the Fijians and Polynesians decided that there was no pure "g" sound in either Fijian or Polynesian speech. In the case of the Fijian, Samoan and Tongan dialects, they used the spare "g" symbol for the "ng" sound. In the case of the Solomons, they could not do this. The Solomon Islanders do use a pure "g" sound as well as "ng" and "ngg." Consequently the 'g symbol had to be used for the customary sound. Strangely enough, we find very compact illustrations of the facts. In the Solomon Islands there are three immediately neighbouring islands named Baga, Ganongga and Kolombangara, thus demonstrating the use of the three separate sounds. Further south we find 'Tulagi," situated on the Lengo" channel, which separates Tulagi from the Island of "Nggela." There again we have the same three sounds. It seems clear enough, therefore, that the name "Tulagi" is correctly spelt and should not be spelt as "Tulangi." P. B. FITZHERBERT.