Melanesia is the region of the Pacific that includes the islands from New Guinea to Fiji. Micronesia consists of the islands to the north of Melanesia. The counting practices of Melanesia and Micronesia include counting by pairs. This method is similar to the pair-counting found in Polynesia, in that pairs are counted from one to ten, and the total count is understood as doubled. Collaborative counting, a method of counting found in Polynesia in which different people keep track of the units, tens, hundreds, and thousands, is also found in Fiji at Melanesia’s eastern border with Polynesia. In the eastern part of Micronesia, Marshall Islanders used stones to tally every ten coconuts. This practice created an external record, which is advantageous in that the external record (the collected stones) can be used away from the goods being counted (the coconuts). It is also a disadvantage because collecting, carrying, and counting stones involves effort that counting-by-sorting does not. In the western part of Micronesia, the Chamorro language of Guam shows dramatic change in its vocabulary of number-words from several centuries of Spanish influence.