Lau is the name given to the language spoken by the inhabitants of
the artificial islets which lie off the northeast coast of Big
Malaita, Solomon Islands. The language spoken on the coast from Uru
on the northeast to Langalanga, Alite Harbor, on the northwest of
Big Malaita, is practically Lau. On the west coast there is
considerable admixture of Fiu, which is the language of the bush
behind the Langalanga lagoon. In Dr. Codrington's "Melanesian
Languages," pp. 39 et seq., certain words are given as spoken at
Alite in Langalanga. These words are probably Fiu rather than Lau.
The purest Lau is spoken at Sulufou, one of the artificial islets
near Atta Cove. The inhabitants of Ai-lali, on the mainland of Big
Malaita opposite the island Aio, are an offshoot of the Lau-speaking
peoples. In Port Adam (Malau) on Little Malaita, some 12 miles
north of Sa'a, there are two villages, Ramarama and Malede,
inhabited by Lau-speaking peoples, and the inhabitants of these
villages hold as a tradition that their forefathers migrated from
Suraina, near Atta Cove, 80 miles away, along the coast to the
north.
The Lau of this grammar and vocabulary was learned from dealings
with the Port Adam natives and also from a stay of several weeks
with Rev. A. I. Hopkins, at Mangoniia, on the mainland opposite the
artificial islet Ferasubua.
It is not claimed that the Lau here presented is the same as the Lau
of the northeast coast of Big Malaita. Doubtless owing to the Port
Adam peoples being surrounded by Sa'a-speaking peoples, they have
adopted Sa'a words and methods of speech to some extent. The women
of the hill peoples above Port Adam have largely been procured as
wives for the Port Adam men and thus there has been a tendency for
the distinctiveness of the Lau language to disappear and for the
Sa'a words to be adopted. While this tendency was perhaps not very
great previous to the introduction of Christianity (for the village
children always follow the language of the father rather than that
of the mother), the teachers in the village schools, after
Christianity was introduced, necessarily used the Sa'a books and,
when translations were eventually made into Lau, words and phrases
of Sa'a crept in. So far as lay in the power of the present author,
he has endeavored to eliminate these Sa'a elements from the present
work.
In the translations made into Lau, some use has been made of the
gerundive, following the use in Sa'a; but until we have further
evidence of the validity of this usage it must be regarded as not
belonging to the genius of the Lau language, and it is therefore
omitted here.
It will be seen that Lau is a typical Melanesian language and has
few marked peculiarities. In Sa'a there is a distinctive use of the
shortened forms of the pronouns of the first and second persons,
_au_ and _'o_, suffixed to verbs and prepositions as object; in Lau
the same shortening is not effected and the longer forms _nau_,
_oe_, are used.
It has not been thought proper to represent any break in
pronunciation such as occurs in Sa'a in such words, e. g., as _ia_
fish, Sa'a _i'e_. Lau shows generally the dropping of such
consonants as are dropped in Sa'a, but it is doubtful if the same
break occurs in pronunciation.
The books already printed in Lau are:
1. A translation of the English Prayer Book comprising matins and
evensong, litany, baptism of adults, certain psalms and hymns,
catechism, Holy Communion with Sunday collects.