(a) Aboriginal Australian.
Many of the new Australasian words are taken from the languages
of the aborigines, often with considerable alteration due to
misunderstanding. Such words are either Australian or Maori.
Whilst in New Zealand careful attention has been paid by
competent scholars to the musical Maori language, it can hardly
be claimed that the Australian family of languages has ever
been scientifically studied, though there is a heap of printed
material--small grammars and lists of words--<i>rudis
indigestaque moles</i>. There is no doubt that the
vocabularies used in different parts of Australia and Tasmania
varied greatly, and equally little doubt that the languages, in
structure and perhaps originally in vocabulary, were more or
less connected. About the year 1883, Professor Sayce, of
Oxford, wrote a letter, which was published in <i>The
Argus</i>, pointing out the obligation that lay upon the
Australian colonies to make a scientific study of a vanishing
speech. The duty would be stronger were it not for the
distressing lack of pence that now is vexing public men.
Probably a sum of L300 a year would suffice for an educated
inquirer, but his full time for several years would be needed.
Such an one should be trained at the University as a linguist
and an observer, paying especial attention to logic and to
Comparative Philology. Whilst the colonies neglect their
opportunities, and Sibylla year by year withdraws her offer,
perhaps "the inevitable German" will intervene, and in a
well-arranged book bring order out of the chaos of vocabularies
and small pamphlets on the subject, all that we have to trust
to now.
The need of scientific accuracy is strong. For the purposes of
this Dictionary I have been investigating the origin of words,
more or less naturalised as English, that come from aboriginal
Australian, in number between seventy and a hundred. I have
received a great deal of kind assistance, many people taking
much trouble to inform me. But there is a manifest lack of
knowledge. Many supplied me with the meanings of the words as
used in English, but though my appeal was scattered far and
wide over Australia (chiefly through the kindness of the
newspapers), few could really give the origin of the words.
Two amongst the best informed went so far as to say that
Australian words have no derivation. That doctrine is hard to
accept. A word of three syllables does not spring complete
from the brain of an aboriginal as Athene rose fully armed from
the head of Zeus.
It is beyond all doubt that the vocabularies of the Aborigines
differed widely in different parts. Frequently, the English
have carried a word known in one district to a district where
it was not known, the aboriginals regarding the word as pure
English. In several books statements will be found that such
and such a word is not Aboriginal, when it really has an
aboriginal source but in a different part of the Continent.
Mr. Threlkeld, in his <i>Australian Grammar</i>, which is
especially concerned with the language of the Hunter River,
gives a list of "barbarisms," words that he considers do not
belong to the aboriginal tongue. He says with perfect
truth-"Barbarisms have crept into use, introduced by sailors,
stockmen, and others, in the use of which both blacks and
whites labour under the mistaken idea, that each one is
conversing in the other's language." And yet with him a
"barbarism" has to be qualified as meaning "not belonging to
the Hunter District." But Mr. Threlkeld is not the only writer
who will not acknowledge as aboriginal sundry words with an
undoubted Australian pedigree.
(b) Maori.
The Maori language, the Italian of the South, has received very
different treatment from that meted out by fate and
indifference to the aboriginal tongues of Australia. It has
been studied by competent scholars, and its grammar has been
comprehensively arranged and stated. A Maori Dictionary,
compiled more than fifty years ago by a missionary, afterwards
a bishop, has been issued in a fourth edition by his son, who
is now a bishop. Yet, of Maori also, the same thing is said
with respect to etymology. A Maori scholar told me that, when
he began the study many years ago, he was warned by a very
distinguished scholar not to seek for derivations, as the
search was full of pitfalls. It was not maintained that words
sprang up without an origin, but that the true origin of most
of the words was now lost. In spite of this double warning, it
may be maintained that some of the origins both of Maori and of
Australian words have been found and are in this book recorded.
The pronunciation of Maori words differs so widely from that of
Australian aboriginal names that it seems advisable to insert a
note on the subject.
Australian aboriginal words have been written down on no
system, and very much at hap-hazard. English people have
attempted to express the native sounds phonetically according
to English pronunciation. No definite rule has been observed,
different persons giving totally different values to represent
the consonant and vowel sounds. In a language with a spelling
so unphonetic as the English, in which the vowels especially
have such uncertain and variable values, the results of this
want of system have necessarily been very unsatisfactory and
often grotesque. Maori words, on the other hand, have been
written down on a simple and consistent system, adopted by the
missionaries for the purpose of the translation of the Bible.
This system consists in giving the Italian sound to the vowels,
every letter--vowel and consonant--having a fixed and
invariable value. Maori words are often very melodious. In
pronunciation the best rule is to pronounce each syllable with
a nearly equal accent.
Care has been taken to remember that this is an Australasian
<i>English</i> and not a Maori Dictionary; therefore to exclude
words that have not passed into the speech of the settlers.
But in New Zealand Maori is much more widely used in the matter
of vocabulary than the speech of the aborigines is in
Australia, or at any rate in the more settled parts of
Australia; and the Maori is in a purer form. Though some words
and names have been ridiculously corrupted, the language of
those who dwell in the bush in New Zealand can hardly be called
<i>Pigeon English</i>, and that is the right name for the
"lingo" used in Queensland and Western Australia, which, only
partly represented in this book, is indeed a falling away from
the language of Bacon and Shakspeare.