Pages 132 to 133.
The children of this age already show a very curious example of
a phonetic self-consciousness in which they are almost as acute
and discriminating as their elders. When the missionaries reduced
the language to writing, there was no _k_ in the language, the _k_
positions in other Polynesian dialects being filled in Samoan either
with a _t_ or a glottal stop. Soon after the printing of the Bible,
and the standardisation of Samoan spelling, greater contact with
Tonga introduced the _k_ into the spoken language of Savai’i and
Upolu, displacing the _t_, but not replacing the glottal stop. Slowly
this intrusive usage spread eastward over Samoa, the missionaries
who controlled the schools and the printing press fighting a dogged
and losing battle with the less musical _k_. To-day the _t_ is the
sound used in the speech of the educated and in the church, still
conventionally retained in all spelling and used in speeches and on
occasions demanding formality. The Manu’a children who had never
been to the missionary boarding schools, used the _k_ entirely. But
they had heard the _t_ in church and at school and were sufficiently
conscious of the difference to rebuke me immediately if I slipped
into the colloquial _k_, which was their only speech habit, uttering
the _t_ sound for perhaps the first time in their lives to illustrate
the correct pronunciation from which I, who was ostensibly learning
to speak correctly, must not deviate. Such an ability to disassociate
the sound used from the sound heard is remarkable in such very young
children and indeed remarkable in any person who is not linguistically
sophisticated.