Stock	Identified	%
Rapanui	3000	984	33
Tahiti	6200	2043	33
Marquesas	6000	1886	31
Mangareva	6600	1715	26
Paumotu [Tuamotus]	2500	1335	53

we might derive the conclusion that there was a widely-severed division in Southeast Polynesia when referred to the basis of recognizability in other languages of the Polynesian family; that the Paumotu stood in one group in the possession of the general treasure of Polynesian speech exceeding a moiety of its own speech equipment; that, unevenly spaced geographically about this central archipelago, four groups of islands shared the Polynesian stock to a fairly even extent, that is to say to the extent of rather more than a quarter of their vocabulary, yet not quite reaching so high as one-third. We have referred once and many times again to the division of Polynesian speech between the Proto-Samoan and the Tongafiti, and to the mingled yet indiscriminate stream which has flowed over Southeast Polynesia and which we have been forced to designate as general Polynesian. The only use which it is premitted us to make of this table is the consideration of its unexpressed number, the unidentified element.

Here we have something positive to deal with, if we may. It is that in the Paumotu slightly less than a half of the speech equipment, in the other subdivisions of the province a shade more than two-thirds of the speech equipment, are wholly unidentifiable elsewhere in Polynesia; so far as we, or any, know, they are quite unknown anywhere in the world. This factor we may consider with profit."

"Not one varies from the Polynesian norm in any slightest degree, not one suggests in itself the slightest possibility of acquisition on loan of theft from any alien source. The only vocables in all Polynesian speech concerning which such suspicion could arise are the scant dozen dozen held in community with Malayan speech. Concerning this element I but reiterate what I have been at pains to prove elsewhere: that the borrowing was by the Malayans from the Polynesians. Furthermore not a single word in this unidentifiable class falls within this Malayan category.

If the unidentified class, then,  is Polynesian yet unknown to other Polynesians, how may we account for its singularity of persistence?"

"Unbooked this people is, unlettered even, its words are in constant danger of loss. Where they remain in touch, one family with another, island with island, archipelago with archipelago - and this we know to have been in many instances the case in the period of the great voyages - the speech would tend toward the correction of its gradual loss, a common vocabulary would exist. But in the case of isolated and remote settlements the loss would progress with no possibility of reparation; each language would tend more and more to a greater bulk of vocabulary which elsewhere had fallen or had been forced into disuse. It does not surprise us that in four of these languages this individual and mutually incomprehensible stock of a primitive common speech should amount to two-thirds of the speech in use.

Why, then, should Paumotu differ in so marked a degree from the other archipelagoes of the province? The answer is simple. The Paumotu are spread over their central sea - that is to say, inner with respect of the limiting points of the province - in a loose chain which facilitates sailing from island to island, no difficulty at all to such navigators as the Polynesians. At its southern links it lies close enough to Mangareva for interchange of visits; at its northern end it lies in close touch with Tahiti and the Marquesas. Individually these three archipelagoes stand at the two-thirds mark of unrecognizability; the Paumotu, enjoying intercourse with all three and then convectively diffusing its better education throughout its own extent, stands at the highest point of recognizability, as nearly as possible at the half-way mark." (Churchill)