Tahiti's Speech

Good and Bad Languages

From Our Special Correspondent

Tahiti. July 30.

ONE satisfying thing the isolation of the war and post-war periods has accompanied, has been the re establishment of the French of Paris as the official language of French Oceania.

During a long period, French “after the school of Los Angeles Atte Bowe” was so commonly heard in and about Papeete, that the purity of the local speech was threatened.

Members of old Tahiti families, whose ancestors were pupils of LMS Missionaries, have resolutely preserved the King’s English, notwithstanding the impact of the Ohio dialect and the extraordinary dialects of Australia and New Zealand, The Chinese have awakened to com prehension that the Cantonese and Hakka are provincial dialects. Accord ingly, the Mandarin speech is taught in the local Chinese schools.

Classic Tahitian is still heard in the churches and meeting-houses and appears on the pages of official documents. The colloquial Tahitian has improved in quality during the period. The absurd gibberish, known as “Parau Tinito” (Chinese Tahitian) has been abandoned.

Young Chinese merchants are learning a speech which is more in conformity with the Tahitian idiom.

Miss Denise Elaine Judd, only child of the late Colonel C. C. Judd and Mrs.

Judd (Now Mrs. Frank McCormack) is to marry Captain D. H. Crompton, of the Australian Staff Corps in Melbourne, in December. The Judd family lived for many years in New Guinea.