NavList:

I fixed the original post before it was read, changing "Polynesia" to "Marshall Islands", but now you have made the same mistaken connection, so this is worth a little discussion. 

You referenced the "Polynesian" approach to navigation and understanding "Polynesians" in your post. But the article is about Marshall Islands navigators. These islands are not Polynesian in geography, and they are not culturally Polynesian. And this really is a big deal. The common Polynesian culture with very similar languages covering a huge fraction of the Pacific Ocean is extraordinary in global history. There's nothing like it before the era of western European colonization. Unfortunately, it is tempting (and wrong) to imagine that this common culture covers all of the islands in that vast ocean. It does not!

Some language comparison... The phrase is "I see three small islands"... something that might come up in Pacific navigation! [credit ChatGPT for providing the originals, slightly edited by me]

• Tahitian: Ua ‘ite au i te toru motu iti.
• Tuamotu: Ua kite au i te toru motu iti.
• Maori: Kua kite au i ngā motu iti e toru.
• MARSHALLESE: Ij lok juon jiluw latak.

The word motu is common across many Polynesian languages and means "island", often a "small island" but "motu iti" makes it explicity small. One can also have a "motu nui" which is "big 'small island' ". And if any of you ever watched the movie "Moana" (which is a wonderful childrens' story for adults, too), you may remember that the home of our heroine, Moana, was called "Motu Nui".

Note also that some Polynesian languages have had greater linguistic evolution. For example, in Hawaiian, a "motu" is a "moku". For a European analogy, Tahitian (spoken on that island and nearby in the central Pacific) and Maori (the pre-Contact language of New Zealand and still an official language there today) are comparable in separation to Spanish and Portuguese. With a little effort and a good ear they are mutually intelligible. And like Spanish and Portuguese, these two Polynesian languages have been separating for roughly a thousand years.

The word equivalent to "motu" in Polynesian dialects is "latak" in Marshallese. There is no linguistic connection between Marshallese and Polynesian languages that would be visible to anyone but an academic scholar. The linguistic distance is comparable to the distance between English and Hungarian and represents roughly 5000 years or more of separation from a common ancestor. Even more relevant to navigation, there is not even a hint of cultural contact between the nation of the Marshall Islands and the extensive Polynesian nation before European Contact. A key, critical measure: there are no widely recognized Polynesian loanwords in Marshallese. Equally interesting perhaps, there is litle evidence of cultural contact between the Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands to their west. Both of these are cultures in the broader Micronesian group, but even here we are looking at differences that we could easily describe as oceans apart. 

What is the significance of this great cultural distance for indigenous ocean navigation in the Pacific? Now that's a fascinating issue and an open question!

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Motu USA