and such as are likely to assist towards a better comprehension of the peculiarities of the Australian languages.
The difficulties that beset the enquirer in attempting to unravel the intricacies of the dialects are great and very numerous. Changes have been effected in consequence of words being, for various reasons, from time to time tabooed, and thereafter falling into disuse. Ellipses are numerous, and are so used as to disguise the dialects; the sounds of words are altered for euphony as they take new terminations; many of the consonants are interchangeable, and the substitution of b and d for their cognates p and t alone is often embarrassing. These difficulties and the general absence of relative pronouns, the absence of gender (with certain remarkable and unexplained exceptions), and the use of the dual, render the study of the native tongues impossible to any but those who live with the blacks, hear their speech day after day, and keep continually on the alert to detect the meaning of obscure sentences.
Many of the words are onomatopœic in their origin, and a few examples are given in the text. They are made from sound; and if all the words thus formed could be collected, we should have a large number of root-words that would assist not only in elucidating the languages of Australia, but would be of essential service in the study of all the languages of the world. Still greater would be the profit if words formed from the sensations produced by taste, sight, smell, and touch could be eliminated. That words bearing relation to the senses, and naturally giving expression to them, have been made in the same manner (though necessarily not so easily discoverable) as those that are imitative of sounds, is, I think, beyond doubt. The words used by savages must, except in comparatively rare instances, have arisen out of their necessities; they are not the result of art or of accident; nor can they have been chosen arbitrarily.
One of the most thoughtful of modern writers has said that "the commonest words we use to indicate ideas are essentially metaphorical, bringing home into the world of mind images derived from material force, and carrying forth again into the outward world conceptions born of that mental power which alone is capable of conceiving;"[1] and this being true of the languages of races of the highest culture, it is easy to understand how other, not always unlike, directing and impulsive powers may have given a distinctive character to the dialects of the Australian natives, without, however, introducing material changes of structure.
The reduplications in the dialects of Victoria are very numerous. Such words as Boorp-boorp, Bullen-bullen, Dong-dong, Bulk-bulk, Kalk-kalk, Mung-mung, Ghur-ghur, Woller-woller, Boolng-boolng, and Knen-knen, occur frequently in all the vocabularies, the number per cent. being probably not less than four. If words that are not literally reduplications, the sounds being changed for euphony, are included, the percentage would be much higher, probably six; and the language is, so to speak, double in another way. The Rev. Mr. Bulmer has shown that the natives have two words for the same thing, and if one be like in sound to the name of any one who dies, it is dropped. It becomes thambora,
- ↑ The Reign of Law, by the Duke of Argyll (sixth edition, 1871), p. 41.
