Aboriginal Australian Languages
From Natives of Australia by Northcote W. Thomas, 1906.
Location: Australia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Natives of Australia by Northcote W. Thomas, 1906.
In Europe we are accustomed to find the same language spoken over large areas; where there is a change of vocabulary there is often a change of grammatical structure; at the same time certain families of languages, in use over a larger area, are related and show resemblances in grammar and vocabulary.
In Australia it is very different; the tribal areas are almost invariably small. Of the grammar we know, it is true, too little to say anything very definite; but there is a certain general similarity in structure, syntactical relations being denoted by postfixes. When we examine the vocabularies, however, we find startling differences between those of tribes apparently identical in culture, organisation, and physical appearance; a certain number of words are common to many, some to nearly all languages, but as a rule the knowledge of the language of one tribe is little help to the comprehension of that of their neighbours.
A curious feature of the native languages is that few have any numerals above three or four; those that have them generally use compounds of one and two for five, six, and so on; thus in the Koko Yimidir language, of which vocabulary has come down to us in Cook’s voyages, five is expressed by ‘burla godera, burla godera, nulu nobun,’ literally ‘both two, both two, odd man one.’ In other cases the form is simpler; the Pitta-Pitta, south of the Gulf, expresses five by ‘ pakoola-pakoolangooro,’ i.e. two-two-one. Anything above the highest numeral is ‘many.’
It must not, of course, be imagined that the blacks have no conception of higher numbers; that they have is clearly shown by an ingenious method of fixing a day for a future meeting. In some parts they touch various parts of the body in succession, the wrist, the arm, the head, etc., each standing for a particular day, until the intended date is reached.
The two or more parties to the arrangement can then keep count of the flight of time by this ingenious system of mnemonics, and meet on the appointed day with as much certainty as if they noted their engagement in a diary. Another proof of the knowledge of higher numbers is found in the custom of giving names to their children according to the order in which they were born, the total number of names available being nine or ten for each sex.
Another curious feature of the language is the small number of consonants, due perhaps in part to the custom of knocking out teeth, in part to the custom of piercing the septum of the nose. F, h, th, v, s, and z are all absent; and initial r is rare.
In New South Wales, according to Threlkeld, the alphabet was as follows:—a, b, d, e, i, I, m, n, ng, o, p, r, t, u, w, y.
The verbal forms are exceedingly complicated; not only are there singular and plural numbers, but also dual; and dual may be either inclusive or exclusive, according as the speaker intends that ‘we’ shall include the person spoken to or not.
It is important to notice that as regards vocabulary, native languages are sometimes liable to change very rapidly. There is a story as to certain runaways having left a tribe and established themselves in an unoccupied area; after thirty years, they or their children spoke a language almost unintelligible to the original tribe.
This may have been due in part to the presence of captured women in their midst, whom they took from other tribes; but in view of the linguistic accomplishments of the Australian, it is certainly surprising that the change was so great as it seems to have been. On the other hand, Cook’s Endeavour River tribe seems to have the same vocabulary as 130 years ago.
Another cause, which, however, operates mainly where the group is of some size—the numbers seem to range from 20 to 200—is the custom of changing the names of certain objects because the word which designated them was identical or formed part of the name of a dead man. To mention the name of the dead would be, according to savage belief both in Australia and many other parts of the world, to summon his ghost; accordingly his name is not mentioned, and the word drops out of use, sometimes for a period of years, sometimes forever, unless chance should bring it into currency again.
In the matter of a knowledge of languages the Australian can give points to most of us. It is true that he has the advantage of having the foreign language at his very door; but even that does not seem to help English people to learn Welsh. It is perhaps a material help that the grammatical structure tends to be identical; still it is no small thing for a man to speak two other languages with ease and understand a fair number more, as was the case in the north of New South Wales.
It is said that from two to three weeks suffices for the learning of a new language; and this agrees with what we know of the extraordinary aptitude of Australians, especially in youth, for the acquisition of knowledge. One of the early voyagers has left on record that a West Australian took no more than five minutes to learn the use of the sextant, whereas the ordinary English boy required some six months for his education in these matters. Similarly, Bishop Salvado records that a West Australian learnt to knit in five minutes!
In connection with the language, some remarks may be made on the message sticks of the Australians. Like most other rude peoples they had nothing of the nature of writing; in common with many other peoples they painted or sculptured animals, human beings, and other marks on bark, stones, sand, and trees; and the inside of their opossum skin cloaks, like their boomerangs, in some parts were marked; but we cannot say that they had any system of picture-writing; we do not even know that the marks had a meaning, as marks of ownership or magical figures. In the message sticks, however, they seem to have had a system of communication which might in time have developed into a script.
In a great many cases the stick was simply a reminder to the messenger; just as the parties to an agreement marked on their bodies, in pipeclay, the tale of the days that had to elapse before they met, so the message sticks served as a calendar to the bearer, and at the same time as a mnemonic of the message which he had to deliver; but without the intervention of the messenger the piece of wood had no meaning for the recipient. Dr. Howitt, however, records some cases in which the stick was simply handed over; in this case the marks must have had an intrinsic meaning, no improbable hypothesis when we consider how marvellously skilful the Australian is in interpreting the smallest signs when he is called upon to track a lost animal or a human being.
In his very earliest youth he begins to learn the language of footprints and other hunters’ lore. When, as we shall see later, special animals were associated with certain people or groups, it would not be a long step to make the drawing of the animal stand for the signature of the group which bore its name; or perhaps the footprints alone might have been used. We can, however, trace little or nothing of any such system, and few conventional signs were in use.
Thomas, Northcote W. Natives of Australia. Archibald Constable and Company, 1906.
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